Nomination for Most Annoying Character on Television goes to…..

Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman) of Private Practice

Every time Violet opens her mouth I want to punch her in the face.

She talks more than she listens. Not a good quality in a shrink.

She gives everyone a sad puppy dog, ‘I feel sorry for you come cry on my couch but really let’s talk about how this relates to me’ look that makes me want to vomit.

For a psychiatrist she’s very self involved and somehow relates everyone else’s problems to her own. Yes she went through an extremely traumatic event, her baby was cut out of her uterus by a deranged woman, but can we go a single episode without referencing ‘the thing that happened to her?!, especially now when another character has recently been violently attacked. Share the spotlight Violet! You’re not the only person to have something bad happen to them!

As the resident female psychiatrist, and resident victim of all things terrible, she tries to help Charlotte after her attack. The only problem with this scenario is that Violet is the complete opposite of who Charlotte EVER wants to be in any aspect of her life: she’s weak, plays the victim card incessantly, and never shuts up about what happened to her. I loved Charlotte taking her down by throwing 'that thing that happened to her' back in her face and calling her damaged goods. Right on Charlotte. And clearly Violet's speech at the end about her own rape (of course she was raped too, everything bad happens to her), while brave of her to do and clearly had all the right intentions, drove Charlotte (the recovered drug addict) to drink or take something, it’s unclear right now which occurred.

Bravo Violet, great psychiatry right there.

TV Viewer Psychology

Why Do We Want to See Bad Things Happen to Our Favorite Characters?

Here’s my philosophical/psychological question of the week: why do we like to see bad things befall our favorite characters? And not just slightly bad things such as losing a trial, not catching the bad guy, or losing the patient but seriously bad things like kidnap, attempted murder and other life shattering occurrences? Why are those things the hook, what gets us talking and foaming at the mouth in anticipation of their occurrence? What does that say about us as viewers? We get attached to these characters, admire them, want to be like them, see ourselves in them and yet we can’t wait to see them hurt. Seriously hurt.

Sure, conflict is necessary in every story ever told, but conflict comes in all shapes and sizes. Breakups, dating, families, life and work in general all fall into the ‘conflict’ category but the highest show ratings of anything are when major crises befall the protagonists.

Maybe we want to see the aftermath, how they cope, or don’t cope, with whatever happened to them. Maybe we don’t like the character and actually want to see bad things happen to them.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed that tragedy is popular because it allows people to experience and let out their negative emotions, 'cleansing' themselves. Maybe the tragedies allow the audience to vicariously experience relief from some pain by seeing the protagonists’ pain relieved?

Or maybe we’re all just twisted and want to feel better about our own lives by seeing bad things happen to fictional characters.

And then there’s the difference between tragedy/pain befalling the characters as a result of outside forces vs. them bringing it upon themselves. If they bring despair on themselves we’re more likely to judge them, say I told you so, or see it coming from a mile away. When an alcoholic starts drinking again, someone in a committed relationships starts flirting, or the normally moral minded character bends the rules we know something bad is brewing, it’s just a matter of when. But when something hits them out of nowhere, they’re attacked, in an accident, or betrayed, well, that’s a whole other story. We’re shocked, we empathize, we worry, and we can’t wait to see what happens next.

Private Practice: “Did You Hear What Happened to Charlotte King?”

As I’ve said before, I have a serious love/hate relationship with Private Practice but this week definitely falls into the love category.

I think everyone has heard what happened to Charlotte King by now thanks to the (deserved) heavy promotion of this week’s Private Practice that was up a whopping 44% in the ratings after last week’s cliffhanger of Charlotte (KaDee Strickland) being blitz attacked in her office.

I had seen the sneak peak, read about the episode, basically knew what was going to happen and yet I was still surprised and shocked not by the events that transpired themselves but by the way the were so artfully handled. It was intense, heartbreaking, and compelling. The use of the graphic and disturbing scenes in the beginning and end coupled with light and beautiful music kicked off the irony present throughout the episode with the victim being the strong one, the doctor (and sexologist) becoming the patient, and Sheldon unknowingly interviewing and trying to help the rapist. They could have EASILY taken the soft ‘Lifetime’ approach to the topic of sexual assault but they went all in.

Charlotte was the right choice for this storyline. She’s the most dominant female character, and oftentimes the antagonist, so to see her as the victim was incredibly jarring. They did stay extremely true to her character, thankfully, and she was still in charge and calling the shots even though she had just suffered a terrible ordeal. Throughout the episode she was the one taking care of her friends. She continually assured her fiancée Cooper, who couldn’t stand to look at her, that she was okay and freaked out on him for calling her the ‘victim’. Amelia confessed to her that she was a drug addict and has been drinking a lot and Charlotte scolded her and said she’d take her to a meeting.

The best interactions were those between Charlotte and Addison: the two strongest characters in the series. Charlotte calls Addison after the attack clearly reaching out but not too far. Addison figures out that Charlotte was raped and is very matter of fact with her (you need an HIV test, the morning after pill, etc) instead of pitying her, which is what Charlotte wanted. The conflict arises when Charlotte refuses to report the rape or tell anyone, besides Addison, that it even happened. This eats Addison alive. She lashes out at her friends, especially Sam when he says that he’s grateful it wasn’t her and is just generally being selfish. When she tries to reason with Charlotte about reporting it by telling her that he could hurt another woman Charlotte’s reaction is heartbreaking and one of the best speeches I've heard on TV in a long time:

“You ever been violated? Anybody rape you lately? Let me tell you what its like. You know those made for TV movies where some woman's crouched down naked in a shower holding her knees and sobbing because when she closes her eyes she can still feel the guys hands on her? How when they show the attack the woman's eyes go all blank and still and she goes to some other place in her mind just to deal with the horror of what's happening to her while some Lillith Fair song plays. It is nothing like that. He's sturdy and sweaty and he licks your face and wipes himself off in your hair and when you try to scream he punches you so hard you see God. And then he goes at you again reaping stuff you didn't even know you had because he enjoyed it so much the first time. I know you're trying to help but if helping me means that everyone is gonna be looking at me the way you're looking at me now please do not help me. “

That is Shonda Rhimes in action. The episodes that she writes always kick ass.

Addison is truly stuck. She is desperate to tell someone, to not be alone with this information, but she won’t betray Charlotte’s confidence. This scenario is going to get very interesting. It was great seeing Kate Walsh in full dramatic form again.

It wouldn’t be Private Practice if I didn’t talk about at least one thing I didn’t like which in this case, and usually every case, is Violet. She was violently attacked and had her baby ripped out of her uterus two years ago (I think) and she can’t go a single episode without talking about ‘that thing that happened to her.’ She’s a therapist and wouldn’t even go in Charlotte’s room because it reminded her too much of her own attack. She referred to Charlotte’s room as ‘her Vietnam.’ Seriously?

But, Violet aside, this was a truly compelling hour of television. KaDee Strickland gave an amazing performance. She had me holding my breath and feeling her suffering. When Pete came in and asked her where it hurt the most she simply said: “my soul.”

It will be interesting to see where they take this storyline. It’s clearly going to eat at Addison and Charlotte will probably develop PTSD if she doesn’t deal with what happened. I hope they continue to reach the very high bar they just set for themselves but I’m not holding my breath on that one. I believe that KaDee can and will pull off this continuing storyline but once all the others return to business as usual it’s going to go back to its melodramatic ridiculousness.

No Law, No Order Just Disappointment

Law & Order: SVU: Time of death 11pm November 3rd, 2010.

I might have scoffed too soon at Olivia's throw away end of teaser pun of "this was no mercy killing" since, ironically, the rest of the episode turned into a slow and painful death of the series I once loved.

This season has been poor at best so far, but the endless hype since the summer by Neal Baer about Maria Bello's presence 'bringing big changes for Benson' led me to believe that they put some thought into this episode. Clearly NBC has bigger problems these days and chose not to supervise the script or shooting of this episode because it was, in a word, a TRAINWRECK.

Even the ER season 4 reunion of Mariska Hargitay, Maria Bello and Alex Kingston couldn't rescue this nor could the adorable picture of Olivia and Elliot on Olivia's desk.

I can't even take a wild guess at what they were trying to do with this 'case' but I was lost in a matter of minutes and unless a LOT was edited out or cut from the script I'm guessing they didn't know what they were doing either.

Benson and Stabler get shot at in the beginning through a door, nothing new, this happens quite often, and yet this time Cragen demands that they get a 'mandatory psych evaluation' before they continue working. Since when do they do this? It was just a ploy to get Olivia on Wong's couch to have to talk about the whole Maria Bello half of the episode. And on that note.....

We somehow get to Maria Bello's house where she is caring for her invalid mother who somehow connects to the murder at the beginning of the episode and who apparently was raped nine months before Maria Bello was born. Child of rape. We get it. This wasn't even presented dramatically and felt completely thrown away. Mariska's performance was underwhelming and emotionless for this being her 'big' episode and clearly, and unrealistically, directly relating to her biggest backstory of being a child of rape.But to be fair, they all seem to be her 'big' episode these days so maybe she's just losing steam. This is the double edged sword with SVU, we want more emotional content but we forget that they can't pull it off when they actually try to do it. They should stick to the subtetly, its clearly all they're capable of.

Then somehow Olivia gets the crazy idea that Maria Bello is her half sister. The reasoning behind this was so skewed I can't even explain it. But, surprise surprise, they're not sisters. Maria Bello's 'Viv' (Viv and Liv? How awful would that have been?), convienantly a recovered drug addict, of course relapses and her son, Calvin, brings her to the precinct. Of course the invalid mother died the night before and she's going off the deep end. Olivia reccommends counseling and sends her on her way.

Then of course there was the therapy session with Wong (thank goodness for the voice of reason) who tells her that she's illogical in thinking that Viv could be her sister and wonders if she told Viv that she was a child of rape more for herself than for Viv's sake. Harsh but possibly true. Thank you Wong, you were the only decent part of this episode.

Also, did Munch die and they forgot to mention it? Where has he been?

And then the 'unbelievable' final act that we all saw coming from a mile away. What has Olivia always wanted? A family. Calvin is left at the precinct to wait for Olivia holding a dramatic envelope which holds, dun dun dun, conveyance of parental rights papers. Oh...wait a minute...didn't they ALREADY DO THIS with a sickly baby who disappeared and may have died but they never followed up on? Clearly they were foreshadowing her getting a child from the beginning of this season with all of the neglected children cases, but why not have her adopt one of the previous ones, particuarly Mackenzie from the premiere, instead of just slamming her with a 12 year old boy. This was not the way to give her a child. This will bring nothing but awkwardness. Where is she going to put him in her 1 bedroom apartment? Is she going to not work as much? Is Elliot going to be her knight in shining armor when she just can't handle an adolescent boy? Will she actually keep him? Doesn't she have to find his father?

The truth is, I'm so disappointed that I don't even care what the answer is to any of these questions.

Way to go SVU.

Grey's Anatomy Documentary Style Episode

“These Arms of Mine”

I went into this documentary style Grey’s Anatomy episode completely doubting their ability to pull it off and pissed at them for copying ER yet again (ER did not one, but two documentary themed episodes, one of which was live). I was happily proven wrong when I watched the episode and am ashamed at myself for doubting the brilliance of Grey’s Anatomy (I won’t say Shonda Rhimes since I can’t wrap my head around her reasoning for Private Practice). The documentary style made the storylines move more rapidly and they had double the amount of scenes they usually do. There were no long speeches, no dramatic pauses, just pure action, dialogue and ‘raw’ emotion.

The documentary crew was out to discover how this hospital that had undergone a major trauma (a mass shooting) was healing. Clearly Cristina isn’t and I love that this storyline is continuing for this long instead of being resolved in two episodes like most series would try to do. I loved the dynamic between her and Meredith because it is reminding us once again that they are the main relationship of the show. Meredith is trying to cover for her, steps in for her in traumas, and takes care of her in the interview which leads to Cristina shutting down completely and is only speaks to the cameras again 4 weeks later when she has formulated exactly what she wants to say and nothing more.

It was beautiful, sad, and moving. The doctors actually explained medical procedures and they seemed legitimate; something that has been severely lacking as of late.

I am loving Alex as the new Peds rockstar and he is adorable interacting with the kids and pretending he doesn’t like them.

I’m pretty upset that Arizona and Callie are going to Africa and hope we don’t have to watch them there (ER couldn’t even pull of their Africa storylines). I’m sure this was just done because Jessica Capshaw (Arizona) is clearly pregnant and they needed to give her time off for maternity leave, but don’t take Callie too!!

I also love how theme oriented this series always. The title “These Arms of Mine” not only reflected the physical surgery they were performing (a double arm transplant), but also Meredith caring for Cristina, the chief caring for his hospital, Alex caring for and about his children patients, and Bailey actually hugging her long time patient who was in the shooting with her (Mandy Moore). Finally, while Mandy Moore’s death was tragic and sad it really brought everything full circle considering that the shooting was brought about by a patient being taken off of life support. Pretty brilliant.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Private Practice

Good episodes of Private Practice (of which there are probably 2 total) and every episode of Grey’s Anatomy just make this show look even worse, if that’s possible.

However, judging from the sneak peak and preview of next weeks episode dealing with a brutal attack against one of the main characters, Charlotte King, one more episode may be added to the ‘good’ list, if only for the directing and KaDee Strickland’s performance judging by what I’ve seen so far (link at the bottom).

The constant ridiculousness of this series makes me cringe at the thought of them attempting a serious storyline, but I will give it a fair shot.

I recently read an interview with Shonda Rhimes in which she explained what she thinks is the main difference between Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. According to her, Grey’s Anatomy is about teenagers and Private Practice is about adults. This is crap. Sure Grey’s Anatomy can definitely draw a parallel to high school but Private Practice is about sex. Period.

My main issue with Private Practice is that they clearly don’t have separate producers/writers for each series. They are far too alike in content and cross over way too much. What was the point of branching off if you’re going to constantly reference the mother ship and float characters back and forth across series?

My other issue is that Private Practice is a blatant nighttime soap opera with the most ridiculous melodramatic medical storylines imaginable (who knew that was possible after Grey’s Anatomy?) I mean really, parents having to choose which of their terminally ill twin daughters to save? The husband of a comatose patient having sex with her to produce a child? The young orphaned daughter of their recently deceased co-worker is dropped off at their doorstep and they ship her off to social services?

But on a positive note I love Kate Walsh, I think she's very talented and if they played to her dramatic strengths more or had episodes that solely centered on her the show could be much better. KaDee Strickland is also growing on me. The rest of the cast is a motley crew of assorted failed television actors who don't really fit together and who's names I still can't keep straight.

I have a pretty serious love/hate relationship with this series. Its’ horrible. I know it’s horrible, and I watch it to see just how bad the horrible-ness gets and yet I still get angry at it for being horrible. I have a problem.

Sneak Peak of Next Week's Private Practice: Did You Hear What Happened to Charlotte King?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxa5Qw9AT8

The Whole Truth

Oh The Whole Truth, we barely knew you. I don’t blame you, you were well written, well acted, and a solid show overall. I blame the networks for piling Wednesday night with 3 legal dramas in the same 10pm time slot. Of course at least one was going to fail. What was the logic behind that? Of course the dull and moronic Law & Order: LA was going to get picked up no matter what with SVU as a lead in. The Defenders is a surprising ringer in this category, I have yet to watch it so I can’t really comment on it except to say that I don’t think I could buy Jerry O’Connell as a deceitful lawyer. And then we get back to The Whole Truth left out in the cold.

The one mistake I believe the show made was not having enough character development right up front. If you’re not Law & Order, and sometimes even if you are, you HAVE to have character development, that’s what the audience initially attaches to unless your procedural is SO fresh and new (like CSI back in the day) that the format trumps everything else. Rob Morrow’s “Jimmy” was a bit smarmy and frat boy like for my taste and was the polar opposite of Maura Tierney’s subtly played tough as nails prosecutor “Kathryn.”

The other major flaw, at least in the marketing of the show, was hailing it as a totally new type of legal drama. Let’s face it, it was trying to revive the very successful David E. Kelley legal drama The Practice. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It was a great, successful, dramatic show, but if you’re going to try what they did you HAVE to develop the characters as they did. That’s what made it successful.

Of course I wish that Maura Tierney’s return to television had been a spectacular hit, but she’ll be fine. She was carrying the show and deserves to be on a series that can challenge her and make her better, not bring her down.

Law & Order: SVU

Perhaps this Law & Order should consider a name change this season to “Law & Order: PSA” since the majority of their episodes this season have veered off in wildly unrelated, and sex-less, directions such as childhood obesity caused by soda and toxic mushrooms as murder weapons. This leaves the viewers wondering if the once hard-hitting, gritty, and oftentimes emotionally brutal series has, dare I say it, run out of pervasive sexual storylines? And even when the episode is sex related they are spouting statistics in their dialogue like they’re testifying in front of congress (pun intended). Markisa, you are a champion for the cause of domestic violence and sexual assault, but you have been for years without inserting blatant statistics and calls to action IN a particular episode. Television is an escape from reality and SVU has been skilled at shedding light on current issues without hitting the viewers over the head with them. Dial it back a notch.

Not to disparage the longest running drama on television, and one of my top favorites, but maybe its time to throw in the towel before it completely crashes and burns. Of course I never want to see one of my favorite shows come to a close but at the same time I want to remember them fondly. If they go out on a low note that’s all anyone will remember and there are PLENTY of episodes to watch over and over again to remember them by. All the fans really want is for Benson and Stabler to get together, which we know, or at least the realistic ones do, won’t happen. So all I’m asking for is this: CLOSURE. Give Olivia the family she’s always wanted whether its through her adopting a child as a single parent, in vitro fertilization which leads to her finally overcoming her fears of passing on her violent and drunk genes, or even meeting someone and getting married. Maybe she takes a desk job to achieve her parental goals, or transfers to a less emotionally and physically draining unit. Or maybe she, or Elliot, become captain and Cragen retires. The series cannot end with the current status quo because then what was the point? It also cannot end with Olivia jetting off to LA to be on LO:LA (as Mariska Hargitay as said she’d be ‘up for’ and Dick Wolf is surely thinking about to retain his most popular and fan attached character). She would never leave Elliot, and if that happened she would waste away for another ten years on that show and fade off into the distance when she retires with no closure whatsoever.

SVU revolutionized the procedural drama format by actually giving their main characters continuing storylines so it would be a shame to rob these characters that we’ve grown to love from completing their arc.