Grey's Doc Needs More Practice

You might not know it from watching Grey’s Anatomy, but Dr. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) has a lot in common with an uptight psychiatrist named Frasier Crane and a dimwitted actor named Joey Tribbiani.
Private Practice, Addison’s much-anticipated spin-off series, premieres tonight on ABC. Joey and Frasier—which are both spin-offs as well—represent two possible fates for Private Practice. While we won’t know whether or not Private Practice will succeed for a couple more weeks, we can get a glimpse of its future by considering these past spin-offs.
Way back in 1993, Cheers ended its run on NBC and a few months later, Frasier premiered. In the spin-off, Frasier Crane left Boston for Seattle, where viewers were introduced to his family, his new friends, and his new career. Eleven years and 37 Emmy Awards later, Frasier went off the air as perhaps the most successful spin-off series ever.
Soon after Friends ended in 2004, Joey premiered to equally high expectations. It seemed like a sure thing: NBC followed the Frasier formula to a tee when creating Joey. Except that when Joey moved to Los Angeles, he left the humor behind with his five pals in New York. Joey was a flop, and NBC pulled the plug after less than two critically maligned seasons. Like so many other doomed spin-offs, quality was lost in the rush to extend a profitable franchise.
Of course, that’s not always the case—it’s easy to think of successful spin-offs because they’re the ones we actually watch. Within the past few years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer paved the way for Angel (1999), the Emmy-winning Boston Legal spun off from The Practice (2004), and Laguna Beach spawned The Hills (2006).
But as the people behind Private Practice are all too aware, for every Frasier, we have to suffer through a lot of Joeys. You’ll remember some of this very abbreviated list of failed spin-offs: Jennifer Love Hewitt’s attempt to branch out from of Party of Five, Time of Your Life (1999), Martha Stewart’s version of the Apprentice (2005), NBC’s Law and Order variant Conviction (2006), and the Dawson’s Creek spin-off Young Americans (2000).
And some spin-offs fall so flat that you’ve probably never heard of them—did you know that Growing Pains was spun off into a sitcom called Just the Ten of Us (1988) or that Home Improvement gave us Buddies (1996)? (Yeah, neither did I.)
So if the odds are stacked against spin-offs, does Addison actually have a chance at success with Private Practice?
The short answer is yes. For the long answer, we’ll have to think about what it takes for a spin-off to survive—and whether Private Practice is even worth watching.
The problem, of course, is that nobody has the formula for a successful spin-off. If somebody did, then Joey wouldn’t have been cancelled and “how you doin’?” would still be on NBC. And for every theory about what makes a spin-off work (maybe a spin-off is more likely to survive if it premieres while the original series is still on the air!) there’s no shortage of contradictory examples.
The one common thread that runs through all successful spin-offs, though, is the solo appeal of the main character. Take the case of Joey. As it turned out, part of Joey’s appeal was that he was half of Joey-and-Chandler—without Chandler, even diehard Friends fans just didn’t care that much.
Lucky for Addison, she isn’t half of anything—except two overdone romantic storylines. And her character is very appealing on her own: after a rocky start, she won over the hearts of Grey’s fans, thanks largely to Walsh’s nuanced portrayal. But despite Addison’s appeal, Private Practice won’t survive unless people like Addison’s new storylines. And it’s not so clear that that’s going to be the case.
The biggest problem with Private Practice is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be—it still feels like Grey’s Lite, albeit with slightly older doctors. The pilot episode bizarrely strives for a Grey’s-style sense of urgency. In a show about a private practice, most of the doctors spend their day frantically tending to patients away from the office. Are we supposed to believe that this is a typical day at Oceanside Wellness Clinic?
The other problem—and this is kind of a big problem—is that the rest of the Private Practice characters just aren’t that compelling—at least not yet. I’d rather watch Addison have a tense conversation with Meredith Grey than chit-chat with her bland friend, Naomi (Audra McDonald). Naomi’s storyline with her ex-husband, Sam (Taye Diggs), already feels stale, as does the character of Cooper (Paul Adelstein), an Internet-sex-addicted pediatrician. (Didn’t ER already do the whole flawed-yet-caring pediatrician thing with George Clooney’s Doug Ross back in the early ’90s?).
The most appealing character in the pilot is also Addison’s new love interest: hunky alternative-medicine practitioner Dr. Finch (Tim Daly). Finch (McFinch?) is appealing enough, and he and Addison do exhibit some chemistry in the pilot. It will be a shame, though, if the writers throw the pair together too soon. The number one thing that Private Practice has going for it is the clean break from the frustrating Addison/McSteamy/McDreamy/Meredith love quadrangle. If Addison gets bogged down in more romantic tension right now, it will have defeated the purpose of the spin-off.
The premiere was disappointing, but Private Practice has a decent premise and more than enough talent to be a good show, so it’s certainly worth another shot. Whether the spin-off becomes a Frasier or a Joey depends on whether Private Practice is allowed to be less like Grey’s and more like itself.