I Like to Watch

How suggestible are you? CBS's "Kid Nation," NBC's "Bionic Woman" and ABC's "Private Practice" aim to play you like a fiddle.

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: CBS, TV, NBC, ABC, World War II, PBS, Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, I Like to Watch

Sept. 23, 2007 | There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are highly suggestible and those who remain relatively impervious to outside influences.

Personally, I'm an emotional amoeba, a transparent blob of mush, nothing but permeable boundaries with fluidy goo in the middle. Set the amoeba down in front of some speakers playing sad music and the amoeba feels sadness. Expose the amoeba to some shaky camera footage with a driving, suspenseful soundtrack and the amoeba's pulse races or, rather, its ectoplasm flutters excitedly.

Some women complain that they cry at diaper commercials. I cry at diaper boxes. I get watery eyes at the last line of any book, even if it wasn't any good. I weep openly during previews for movies that I don't want to see.

Once, I saw a very small ad in the newspaper for the movie "The Joy Luck Club." I didn't know much about it, and didn't plan to see it. The tag line for the ad was something like, "Because family means everything" or "They stuck together through thick and thin." I don't remember. All I know is that I glanced at it and choked up.

Yes, my point is that you should never, ever trust my opinion on anything, ever again.

Private, keep out!
OK, then! Onward, to my strong opinions on the new and returning shows coming your way soon. First: ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff, "Private Practice" (premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26).

"Private Practice," like "Grey's Anatomy," is an exercise in emotional manipulation, custom-made for big girls. Whether those big girls are men or women hardly matters. We big girls are meant to sit patiently through the tomfoolery -- unbelievable situations, over-the-top patients and a general, "Ally McBeal"-esque circus atmosphere -- in order to get to the parts where we start to invest way too much in flat characters and, inevitably, cry like little babies over them. Yes, the goal is to fall to pieces over cartoon-grade melodrama while some heart-wrenching, whispery ballad plays our emotions like a cheap, poorly strung fiddle.

Take the pilot. We begin with Dr. Addison Shepherd (Kate Walsh) telling Chief that she's leaving Seattle Grace. "I want to throw my hat all the way up in the air," she tells him with an adorable smile, and we're supposed to feel warmth in our hearts for her, just like we once felt for Mary Tyler Moore. Instead, we want to grab her hat and throw it into traffic.

Undaunted, Addison moves to Malibu or maybe Huntington Beach, Calif., and dances naked in her brand-new, multimillion-dollar house, right on the beach. (Can a doctor who treats one patient per day afford that mortgage?) One of her colleagues (Taye Diggs), who happens to live next door, sees her dancing naked. People run out to the beach in front of their houses to discuss it. "It's not like I look bad naked," Addison says in her own defense. "A lot of men have enjoyed seeing me naked. Well, not a lot. Eight. Well, eleven."

Oh, Jesus. This again. Addison is starting to feel like the self-involved friend whose calls we avoid. What happened to the brusque, no-nonsense Addison we fell in like with back in Seattle? Next, Addison shows up at her new job at an alternative medicine Wellness Center, and the partners don't even know she's joining the practice (not likely). Her boss shows her the birthing suite and tells her she only has to see one patient a day, but fails to explain how the center can pay its bills and still pay her enough to cover her enormous mortgage. Then Addison's colleague/love interest (played by Tim Daly) worries that she moved to California to be closer to him, since they kissed on the Addison-spinoff episode of "Grey's Anatomy" last spring. Addison says something like "I sooo didn't move here just because you kissed me!" and he says something like "You sooo did!" And unfortunately, they have time for this crap because they only have to see one patient a day.

Soon, zany patients enter and total mayhem ensues, and it all foams up into one big lather of terrible losses and tearful confessions and miraculous medical maneuverings involving childbirth or dead children, until the sweet, soft vocals and the empathic, teary-eyed doctors have you reaching for tissues. Roll credits.

But after you cry and cry and cry and blow your nose five or six times, you have to ask yourself: Is this show really so bad? I mean, you did just spend the last five minutes sobbing. Doesn't that mean that "Private Practice" is worth watching?

Well, maybe, if you're looking for emotional catharsis. I guess this is why I keep watching "Grey's Anatomy," too. Even though I'm annoyed at the overwrought voice-over ("All good things must come to an end. That's what they say, anyway. But don't endings -- even good endings -- make you wish that you could start back at the beginning again?"), even though I never want to see Meredith or McDreamy or that dummy George ever again, there I am when the heartbreaking ballad kicks in and the defibrillator paddles come out and Mean Daddy smacks Meredith in the face and blames her for the death of his wife. I want to be emotionally abused by my TV set.

Ultimately, asking if "Private Practice" is good is like asking if a Twinkie is good. The answer is "No" and "Of course!" and, also, "Give me another one."

Next page: Inside CBS's child labor camp!