[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
John McCain has failed yet another leadership test. This time, it was on how he responds under the pressure of a crisis.
A little more than two weeks ago, Barack Obama took a commanding lead in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll, an advantage he has steadily built on ever since. (Obama's 52 percent to 44 percent lead as of today is larger than any advantage held by George W. Bush or John Kerry at any point in the 2004 general election campaign.) This turn of events came after months of the race being steadily tight, with neither candidate taking a lead of more than a handful of percentage points. McCain's campaign was staggered by a two-punch combination of the candidate's unsteady handling of the financial crisis (There is no problem! There is a problem! I'm suspending my campaign! I'm going to Washington! I scuttled the deal! I'm not debating! Okay, I'll debate!) and the public perception of his ticket's defeat in both the first presidential debate (in which McCain looked angrier than Lou Piniella after the Dodgers sweep) and the vice presidential debate (in which Sarah Palin did a pitch-perfect impression of a female version of Ron Burgundy).
So with McCain's campaign in a freefall, with polls in swing states moving in Obama's direction, and with the electoral college map steadily collapsing in on McCain, and with the election less than a month away, McCain had time for one last major move, one last gesture to stop the bleeding and try and turn around the runaway train leading his campaign off of a cliff. This was a time for McCain to show his mettle, to demonstrate how he reacts in a time of crisis. And what did McCain choose to do? He opted to viciously attack Obama's character with recycled lies and distortions, all in an effort to get Obama and the media to stop talking about important issues like the economic crisis.
In other words, McCain failed the grace-under-pressure test.
In fact, he failed it in two regards. Obviously, on the surface, it is disgraceful that someone who was viciously and disgustingly smeared in 2000 by Bush, and who obviously was deeply wounded by the attacks, would then turn around eight short years later and do the exact same thing to another candidate. Aside from the hypocrisy of the whole thing, the electorate should reject the attempt of a candidate to engage in personal and false attacks on the character of his opponent, all while important issues, including an economic crisis and two wars, demand attention. This tactic, in and of itself, should provoke a negative reaction from voters.
But there is really an even bigger tactical blunder in McCain's latest desperation heave (the third or fourth since 2007, depending on what you include on the list). The effort is, in a word, lame. Bush proved in 2000 and again in 2004 that lies and smears can be effective. But the caveat to that rule is that the smut-tossing has to be done in a smart, calculated manner. McCain's attacks this week have been awkward, clumsy and ill-conceived, more likely to blow up in his campaign's face rather than in his opponent's camp.
McCain and his talking-points-reading running mate have decided to smear Obama with false charges that he was friends with Bill Ayers, who, when Obama was eight years old, was a member of the Weather Underground. They are also once again bringing up the incendiary remarks of the retired pastor of Obama's former church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
These attacks are recycled, having played out at length during the Democratic primary. So Obama not only successfully came up with solutions back then, explaining that he condemned Ayers's actions and never had any relationship with him, and eventually leaving Wright's church and condemning Wright's words, after giving an eloquent and insightful speech on the roll of race in modern society, but he now has the benefit of time and trial-and-error to craft an equally effective response to McCain's warmed-over sleazy attacks.
But an even more dramatic tactical error by McCain was his failure to realize that he and his running mate have skeletons in their closets that are far larger than the ones trumped up against Obama. And in many cases, the charges against the Republican ticket are newer and fresher to this campaign.
For McCain himself, by dredging up these old distortions of Obama's record, he has opened the door for Obama to introduce a whole new generation to McCain's involvement in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s that necessitated a bailout by the government that eventually cost more than $500 billion. McCain, as a member of the so-called Keating Five, was criticized by the Senate for his role in the fall of one of the biggest thrifts, Lincoln Savings and Loan. (In fact, the Obama campaign just released a video detailing McCain's involvement in the scandal.) At a time when voters are fleeing from McCain because of his poor handling of the current financial crisis precipitated by financial industry failures, the last thing he needed was a reminder that he played a leading role in a large, similar debacle 20 years ago.
And Paul Begala revealed on Meet the Press on Sunday that in the 1980s, McCain served on the board of the ultra-conservative U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for its ties to anti-Semitic and racists organizations. Certainly, McCain's actual conduct trumps the fact that Obama occasionally found himself in situations with Ayers.
The past conduct of Palin and her husband offers a treasure trove of affiliations that far exceed in actuality any of the events of Obama's life that have been distorted by the McCain campaign. On the wacky religious front, Palin has credited a pastor who protected her from witchcraft (you can see him do it here) with helping her become governor. If that was the whole tale, it would just be one of those funny, wacky items to provide some amusement. But the story is much more dangerous than that. A longer clip of the preacher's sermon shows his belief that the church's teachings should infiltrate the country's culture, economics, politics, education, media and government, accusing the "Israelites" of doing so already. And this is the same church that on August 17 of this year welcomed Jews for Jesus leader David Brickner, who blamed terrorist attacks on Israel as being punishment from God for not believing in Christianity. Brickner said: "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it." As much as the McCain campaign thinks Ayers and Wright will scare the Jewish grandmothers and grandfathers in Florida, I'm sure the goings on at Palin's church (which she has yet to denounce) will seem even scarier.
And the membership of Palin's husband in the Alaska Independence Party, which advocates for the secession of Alaska from the union, and Palin's recording, as governor, of a welcoming address for the party's convention, in which she praises its work, is far more damning than anything Obama has done, either in actuality or according to the McCain campaign's smears. Again, Obama barely knows Ayers, but the Republican candidate for the vice presidency has expressed support for a party, one in which her husband was a member for seven years, that no longer wants to be a part of the United States, and whose leader, Joe Vogler, has espoused anti-American sentiments that are every bit as incendiary as what Rev. Wright said. (A sample Vogler quote: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.")
In the end, when McCain faced the biggest crisis of his general election campaign, he was, in effect, being given a test of how he would respond under pressure to an adverse situation. And what did he do? He chose a morally indefensible strategy based on lies and distortions, and the strategy was poorly conceived and sure to be ineffective.
In other words, McCain failed the test miserably. No voter, not Democrats, independents or Republicans, should want McCain to apply these kind of knee-jerk, dishonorable, ineffective tactics to the problems facing the country.
If Americans want any hope of changing the culture of failed leadership that the United States has endured for the last eight years, they have to reject a candidate who has allowed himself to fall into the gutter, and who has displayed an acute lack of understanding of what is needed in a challenging time. McCain's decision to personally smear Obama with lies and distortions should go down in history as the final nail in his political coffin. Let's hope it does.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
VP Debate: Apparently, Not Imploding Is Enough If You're "Just Like Us"
[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]
Sarah Palin didn't trip and fall on her way to or from the podium. She didn't go on a nonsensical, grammar-defying journey through the English language while talking about her state's proximity to Russia or the Wall Street bailout. And she didn't demonstrate a moment of shocking ignorance, like failing to know what the Bush Doctrine was or being unable to name a single Supreme Court decision.
And because Sarah Palin didn't implode on the stage last night in St. Louis, her performance was hailed as a success. The New York Daily News trumpeted, "Sarah Holds Her Own," and the New York Post announced, "Sarah Show: Pit Bull Hangs Tough in Clash With Biden," and even the New York Times and Washington Post portrayed her performance as generally positive.
Really? Because she didn't self-destruct on stage, she is a success?
If that was all there was to the reaction to Palin's performance, if it was only that the bar was set so low that she is being lauded simply for not majorly screwing up onstage, that would speak volumes about how we, as a country, have fallen so far in our expectations of who our leaders should be. But the reality of the reaction was far worse.
In fact, Palin's folksy, "gee whiz, I'm just a small town hockey mom and all of you Washington folk sure are full of it" approach reflected a clear strategy, the idea that people would be drawn to support her because she's "just like us."
Let me go on the record with something: I went to a pretty good undergraduate university, graduated in the top ten percent of my law school class (and was the editor of the school's entertainment and sports law review), and am a decent enough writer that the good folks at Huffingtonpost.com allow me to blog, and yet I don't want someone "just like me" to be president. I want someone better than me. And 99.9999 percent of us should, too.
Palin is not running to be the vice president of the PTA or the local country club (or even to be the governor of the 47th biggest state with a population roughly equal to that of Columbus, Ohio). She is running to be the vice president of the United States, and if statistics hold, that would mean that there is a decent chance she would one day be the president. That means she would, among many other things, hold in her hand the power to launch nuclear attacks, send our troops into combat, meet and negotiate with world leaders, set the strategy for fighting terrorism, direct the government's participation in the economy (and how to handle the current credit market shutdown that is threatening to send the country into a tailspin), determine how we will address the crises we are experiencing with energy and global warming, and provide leadership during good times and bad.
The power and responsibility of the president of the United States is awesome. It requires a leader with intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to process huge amounts of data in a variety of areas and then make sophisticated and complicated determinations, as well as a need to see things with a depth and clarity that most average people lack. We've seen over the last eight years what happens when someone obviously out of his depth was thrown into the position. Virtually every aspect of American life -- the economy, our foreign policy, our military, our energy policy, etc. -- is in crisis, in no small part due to the ineptitude of George W. Bush.
It is ludicrous to believe that Sarah Palin has anything even approaching the intelligence and knowledge necessary to do the job. And that was demonstrated in St. Louis last night.
At the debate, people were apparently charmed by her folksiness. They loved how she told moderator Gwen Ifill and her opponent Joe Biden that she wasn't going to answer their questions. But what she was really saying was that if she didn't know the answer to a question, rather than make a fool of herself like she did with Charles Gibson or Katie Couric, she would instead say something about which she could provide an answer. Shouldn't we be worried that a candidate for vice president is so limited in knowledge and expertise that there are whole areas she can't properly talk about? That she would, as Tina Fey so brilliantly said it on Saturday Night Live, need a lifeline?
Palin spent the debate spewing talking points. She sounded like a newscaster, reading copy provided by someone else. She didn't demonstrate any depth of insight, knowledge or understanding about the problems the U.S. faces. When confronted with arguments, she couldn't do any thinking on her own. She simply reverted back to a talking point, and sometimes not even the right one. Often, it seemed not like she was choosing to answer a different question, but as if she didn't understand the question she was supposed to answer. She hammered home outright lies and distortions, as if saying them again and again with conviction would make them true. I started to wonder if she even really knew that what she was saying wasn't true. I started to feel like she was Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, signing off with "Go f--- yourself, San Diego," just because it was on the teleprompter.
But really, in the end, all this isn't even about Palin. It's about us, as a country. Any society with its priorities straight would have watched Palin last night and, regardless of ideological beliefs, ruled her out as a candidate for the vice presidency. It's not about her lack of experience (although you could certainly make that argument), nor is it about her extreme right wing beliefs (which were nicely hidden last night), but it is all about her lack of ability. The fact that she is ordinary when the job calls for extraordinary.
The fact that the lead story this morning is that Palin "held her own" with Biden rather than that she was obviously completely out of her depth says a lot more about us than it does about her. It says that we haven't learned our lesson after choosing an intellectually inferior president for the last eight years, after rejecting Al Gore in 2000 for being "wooden" or a "policy wonk." I'm sorry, but when did being president require the office holder to be the life of the party? Shouldn't we want a smart person in the job? Wouldn't that be a good thing?
It should be, but what the response to last night's debate tells us is that it's not. At least not in the minds of too many Americans. Rather than reward knowledge and intellect in this country, we reject it, saying that it makes the candidate "arrogant" or "boring" or "elitist" (or, as two Southern Republicans referred to Barack Obama, "uppity," but that is a whole other discussion). No, the U.S. has become an anti-intellectual society that scorns intelligence and ability and wants leaders that are "just like them."
Well, as I often say, democracy works, just not always how you want it to. If you want someone "like us," you'll get someone "like us." And most of "us" would be way out of our depth if thrown into the White House. Again, we had someone "like us" the last eight years. How did that work out?
I thought that maybe, just maybe, the cavalcade of severe problems facing this country would refocus voters a bit and make them realize that we need someone better than us to find solutions. But the reaction to last night's debate shows that we really haven't changed at all.
The fact that Palin's performance last night was not roundly dismissed as that of an unexceptional, unqualified, unknowledgable, unintelligent joke is an embarrassment for this country. Now, apparently, not being a total train wreck is enough to garner accolades for a debate performance. Knowledge, insight and the ability to reason are, apparently, irrelevant. The key is just spitting out prewritten talking points and showing that, aw shucks, you're just another hockey mom from the heartland of America who is "just like us." I think that's great the next time we're looking for someone to lead the local hockey team supporter's club. But to be vice president and confront the crises facing the United States, I'd prefer someone not like me at all, but, rather, a lot better than me. And certainly a lot better than Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin didn't trip and fall on her way to or from the podium. She didn't go on a nonsensical, grammar-defying journey through the English language while talking about her state's proximity to Russia or the Wall Street bailout. And she didn't demonstrate a moment of shocking ignorance, like failing to know what the Bush Doctrine was or being unable to name a single Supreme Court decision.
And because Sarah Palin didn't implode on the stage last night in St. Louis, her performance was hailed as a success. The New York Daily News trumpeted, "Sarah Holds Her Own," and the New York Post announced, "Sarah Show: Pit Bull Hangs Tough in Clash With Biden," and even the New York Times and Washington Post portrayed her performance as generally positive.
Really? Because she didn't self-destruct on stage, she is a success?
If that was all there was to the reaction to Palin's performance, if it was only that the bar was set so low that she is being lauded simply for not majorly screwing up onstage, that would speak volumes about how we, as a country, have fallen so far in our expectations of who our leaders should be. But the reality of the reaction was far worse.
In fact, Palin's folksy, "gee whiz, I'm just a small town hockey mom and all of you Washington folk sure are full of it" approach reflected a clear strategy, the idea that people would be drawn to support her because she's "just like us."
Let me go on the record with something: I went to a pretty good undergraduate university, graduated in the top ten percent of my law school class (and was the editor of the school's entertainment and sports law review), and am a decent enough writer that the good folks at Huffingtonpost.com allow me to blog, and yet I don't want someone "just like me" to be president. I want someone better than me. And 99.9999 percent of us should, too.
Palin is not running to be the vice president of the PTA or the local country club (or even to be the governor of the 47th biggest state with a population roughly equal to that of Columbus, Ohio). She is running to be the vice president of the United States, and if statistics hold, that would mean that there is a decent chance she would one day be the president. That means she would, among many other things, hold in her hand the power to launch nuclear attacks, send our troops into combat, meet and negotiate with world leaders, set the strategy for fighting terrorism, direct the government's participation in the economy (and how to handle the current credit market shutdown that is threatening to send the country into a tailspin), determine how we will address the crises we are experiencing with energy and global warming, and provide leadership during good times and bad.
The power and responsibility of the president of the United States is awesome. It requires a leader with intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to process huge amounts of data in a variety of areas and then make sophisticated and complicated determinations, as well as a need to see things with a depth and clarity that most average people lack. We've seen over the last eight years what happens when someone obviously out of his depth was thrown into the position. Virtually every aspect of American life -- the economy, our foreign policy, our military, our energy policy, etc. -- is in crisis, in no small part due to the ineptitude of George W. Bush.
It is ludicrous to believe that Sarah Palin has anything even approaching the intelligence and knowledge necessary to do the job. And that was demonstrated in St. Louis last night.
At the debate, people were apparently charmed by her folksiness. They loved how she told moderator Gwen Ifill and her opponent Joe Biden that she wasn't going to answer their questions. But what she was really saying was that if she didn't know the answer to a question, rather than make a fool of herself like she did with Charles Gibson or Katie Couric, she would instead say something about which she could provide an answer. Shouldn't we be worried that a candidate for vice president is so limited in knowledge and expertise that there are whole areas she can't properly talk about? That she would, as Tina Fey so brilliantly said it on Saturday Night Live, need a lifeline?
Palin spent the debate spewing talking points. She sounded like a newscaster, reading copy provided by someone else. She didn't demonstrate any depth of insight, knowledge or understanding about the problems the U.S. faces. When confronted with arguments, she couldn't do any thinking on her own. She simply reverted back to a talking point, and sometimes not even the right one. Often, it seemed not like she was choosing to answer a different question, but as if she didn't understand the question she was supposed to answer. She hammered home outright lies and distortions, as if saying them again and again with conviction would make them true. I started to wonder if she even really knew that what she was saying wasn't true. I started to feel like she was Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, signing off with "Go f--- yourself, San Diego," just because it was on the teleprompter.
But really, in the end, all this isn't even about Palin. It's about us, as a country. Any society with its priorities straight would have watched Palin last night and, regardless of ideological beliefs, ruled her out as a candidate for the vice presidency. It's not about her lack of experience (although you could certainly make that argument), nor is it about her extreme right wing beliefs (which were nicely hidden last night), but it is all about her lack of ability. The fact that she is ordinary when the job calls for extraordinary.
The fact that the lead story this morning is that Palin "held her own" with Biden rather than that she was obviously completely out of her depth says a lot more about us than it does about her. It says that we haven't learned our lesson after choosing an intellectually inferior president for the last eight years, after rejecting Al Gore in 2000 for being "wooden" or a "policy wonk." I'm sorry, but when did being president require the office holder to be the life of the party? Shouldn't we want a smart person in the job? Wouldn't that be a good thing?
It should be, but what the response to last night's debate tells us is that it's not. At least not in the minds of too many Americans. Rather than reward knowledge and intellect in this country, we reject it, saying that it makes the candidate "arrogant" or "boring" or "elitist" (or, as two Southern Republicans referred to Barack Obama, "uppity," but that is a whole other discussion). No, the U.S. has become an anti-intellectual society that scorns intelligence and ability and wants leaders that are "just like them."
Well, as I often say, democracy works, just not always how you want it to. If you want someone "like us," you'll get someone "like us." And most of "us" would be way out of our depth if thrown into the White House. Again, we had someone "like us" the last eight years. How did that work out?
I thought that maybe, just maybe, the cavalcade of severe problems facing this country would refocus voters a bit and make them realize that we need someone better than us to find solutions. But the reaction to last night's debate shows that we really haven't changed at all.
The fact that Palin's performance last night was not roundly dismissed as that of an unexceptional, unqualified, unknowledgable, unintelligent joke is an embarrassment for this country. Now, apparently, not being a total train wreck is enough to garner accolades for a debate performance. Knowledge, insight and the ability to reason are, apparently, irrelevant. The key is just spitting out prewritten talking points and showing that, aw shucks, you're just another hockey mom from the heartland of America who is "just like us." I think that's great the next time we're looking for someone to lead the local hockey team supporter's club. But to be vice president and confront the crises facing the United States, I'd prefer someone not like me at all, but, rather, a lot better than me. And certainly a lot better than Sarah Palin.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
"Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" Are Back, But Are They Better?
[NOTE: The following article will also appear as my regular television column for WILDsound.]
Shonda Rhimes presides over quite an empire. She is the creator and executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC, Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern), one of the top-rated scripted shows on the air, as well as “Private Practice” (ABC, Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern), the “Grey’s” spin-off that was one of the top-rated new programs of last year’s strike-abbreviated season. But while her creations have been unquestionably successful in terms of viewership, they both have taken some hits from critics ("Grey's" for losing its way, "Private" for not finding one in the first place). With both shows returning in the last week for their new seasons (the fifth for "Grey's," and the second for "Private"), it's time to ask: Are the shows heading in the right direction?
I have often accused "Grey's" of overplaying the disaster card. It seemed like every week there would be some kind of colossal event, whether it be a ferry wreck or a patient with a bomb inside of him. I've joked that I've been to Seattle, and it's just not that exciting. And being the parent of a Seattle Grace Hospital doctor involves a higher mortality rate than cliff diving.
I'm happy to report that in this season's two-hour premiere, no parents are harmed, and no mass catastrophes befall the fine city of Seattle. In fact, not much at all is happening at the hospital, since not only has Seattle Grace been dropped from second to 12th in the rankings of surgical residency programs, but the trauma center has been demoted one level, meaning all of the real serious emergency cases are being sent across town to Seattle Mercy.
To me, this was a brilliant move, on several fronts. First of all, I think focusing the attention away from a disaster-of-the-week mentality and back on the characters shifts the program back to the formula that made the early seasons work so well, when the doctors' in-and out-of-hospital dramas drove the episodes. Even more importantly, the downgrading reflected the anarchy that had beset the surgical staff at Seattle Grace over the previous couple of years. The array of questionable conduct by the staff included an intern (Katherine Heigl's Dr. Izzie Stevens) killing a patient (her fiance, no less) in an attempt to make him sick enough to get to the top of a heart-donor list, the head cardiac surgeon (the now-departed Dr. Preston Burke, played by Isiah Washington until he went Anita Bryant on the set) operating with hand tremors and allowing his intern/fiance (Sandra Oh's Christina Yang) to do his work for him, and the renown plastic surgeon (Eric Dane's Dr. Mark Sloan) who through his lecherous behavior inspired a rebellion of the nursing staff, not to mention enough in-staff hook-ups to make the managers of a swingers' club jealous. It seemed only right that with so much going on that had nothing to with the practice of medicine, the reputation of Seattle Grace had to take a beating.
But not everything changed with the coming of a new season. The on-again, off-again romance between Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) seemed to get a resolution in least year's finale, when Meredith built a "house of candles" on the site Derek picked out for a home for them to share. But Meredith spent the whole two-hour premiere whining and freaking out about her fear of commitment after she asks Derek to move in with her. When Christina finally couldn't take it anymore and yelled at her to shut up, I think she was speaking for most of the viewing audience. I know I, at least, have had it with Meredith's dithering. Let's hope that her decision at the end of the episode to allow Derek to move in with her will end her constant whining and obsessing on the subject. It's time for her to face new demons (of which she obviously has plenty).
And "Grey's" hasn't completely lost its taste for the bizarre medical twist. Christina getting stabbed with a falling icicle was so silly, I couldn't believe I was watching the whole subplot unfold on network television. (I mean, wouldn't it just have melted in a few minutes?)
But I liked the shifted focus of the show. I like what appears to be the overriding plot line for the first part of this season, Chief of Surgery Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) cracking down to make sure that the hospital regains its high standing. When he gave a speech to the doctors about the need for them to get better, it was like Rhimes was speaking through him as to what needs to be done on the show itself. And I liked that the plots were driven by the relationships between the doctors and a handful of interesting -- but plausible -- medical cases. Christina's instant alliance with army surgeon Dr. Own Hunt, played by new cast member Kevin McKidd, might have happened to fast to be believable, but at the same time, it beats the past months of her post-Burke descent into self-pity. I think I'm okay with Dr. Lexie Grey's (Chyler Leigh) possibly unrequited crush on repeating intern Dr. George O'Malley (T.R. Knight). And I thought the subplot about stealing three trauma patients from Seattle Mercy by having their wives request it was entertaining. The story gave three well-regarded older actresses (Bernadette Peters, Kathy Baker and Mariette Hartley) the chance to really tear into some juicy scenes.
In the end, it's just good to see that Rhimes is trying to make "Grey's" better. It's a well-written, well-acted show, and it consistently looks great, too, so with the changes made apparent in the premiere, I'm encouraged that this season will be an improvement over the last.
Rhimes's work on "Private" will be more complicated, and more difficult, though. In my review of the spin-off last season, I lamented that in moving from "Grey's" to her new show, Kate Walsh's Dr. Addison Montgomery had "been reduced to a whiny, neurotic basket case." I went on to note: "For a show written and created by a woman, it's hard to believe how all of the women [on the program] are the embodiments of negative stereotypes." And I wasn't the only one who thought that a lot of work had to be done to bring "Private" up to speed.
I was a bit encouraged by last night's season premiere, since it seemed to me that Rhimes was at least trying to portray Addison as more like the strong, confident surgeon she was on "Grey's." In the episode, she stands up to her best friend, Dr. Naomi Bennett (Audra McDonald), both with a patient (fertility specialist Naomi agreed to get a couple pregnant so they could use the umbilical cord blood to save their dying seven-year-old son, but the son has a week to live, so the couple wants the doctors to induce birth, even though the fetus is only six-months old, something Addison is virulently against) and over the medical practice (administrator Naomi has created a financial mess, but she asks Addison not to tell the others, including her ex-husband Dr. Sam Bennett, played by Taye Diggs).
It was nice to see flashes of the "old" Addison. She was confident even in her indecision as she decided whether to accede to the advances of her brooding colleague Dr. Pete Wilder (Tim Daly) and/or the questionably dependable cop she met last season, Kevin Nelson (David Sutcliffe). And, maybe most encouragingly, Addison is back doing surgery.
Now it's time to rehabilitate everyone else in her practice. Naomi spent all of last season stress eating and pouting over the demise of her marriage. Not much has changed, at least not yet, based on her dour demeanor yesterday. And while psychiatrist Dr. Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman) is no longer insanely and pathetically stalking her ex, she is still a needy mess, pestering her best buddy, Dr. Cooper Freedman (Paul Adelstein), about taking their annual vacation together. But Cooper is sleeping on the sly with hospital head honcho Dr. Charlotte King (KaDee Strickland), who is still so emotionally shut off she can't handle any emotion with Cooper beyond lust. The characters are making some tiny steps forward, though. Violent recognizes her neediness with Cooper, and Charlotte makes a gesture to Cooper (even if it is a tiny, pathetic one) after cutting down his effort to move their relationship along. The evolution might be small and slow, but kudos to Rhimes for trying.
Ultimately, though, it's not yet enough. "Private" still lacks the snap and bite of "Grey's." Time will tell if the upcoming addition of "Swingtown" star and former "Melrose Place" resident Grant Show, as Addison's brother, will make things better or worse (let's hope he brings more "Swingtown" and less "Melrose Place"). But, in the end, the show will rise and fall with Addison and her fellow doctors. The "Grey's" doctors may not be all that likable, but they have enough interesting stuff going on to keep you interested. The "Private" gang isn't there yet. Rhimes seems to at least understand the problem. And that's half the battle. For both shows.
Shonda Rhimes presides over quite an empire. She is the creator and executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC, Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern), one of the top-rated scripted shows on the air, as well as “Private Practice” (ABC, Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern), the “Grey’s” spin-off that was one of the top-rated new programs of last year’s strike-abbreviated season. But while her creations have been unquestionably successful in terms of viewership, they both have taken some hits from critics ("Grey's" for losing its way, "Private" for not finding one in the first place). With both shows returning in the last week for their new seasons (the fifth for "Grey's," and the second for "Private"), it's time to ask: Are the shows heading in the right direction?
I have often accused "Grey's" of overplaying the disaster card. It seemed like every week there would be some kind of colossal event, whether it be a ferry wreck or a patient with a bomb inside of him. I've joked that I've been to Seattle, and it's just not that exciting. And being the parent of a Seattle Grace Hospital doctor involves a higher mortality rate than cliff diving.
I'm happy to report that in this season's two-hour premiere, no parents are harmed, and no mass catastrophes befall the fine city of Seattle. In fact, not much at all is happening at the hospital, since not only has Seattle Grace been dropped from second to 12th in the rankings of surgical residency programs, but the trauma center has been demoted one level, meaning all of the real serious emergency cases are being sent across town to Seattle Mercy.
To me, this was a brilliant move, on several fronts. First of all, I think focusing the attention away from a disaster-of-the-week mentality and back on the characters shifts the program back to the formula that made the early seasons work so well, when the doctors' in-and out-of-hospital dramas drove the episodes. Even more importantly, the downgrading reflected the anarchy that had beset the surgical staff at Seattle Grace over the previous couple of years. The array of questionable conduct by the staff included an intern (Katherine Heigl's Dr. Izzie Stevens) killing a patient (her fiance, no less) in an attempt to make him sick enough to get to the top of a heart-donor list, the head cardiac surgeon (the now-departed Dr. Preston Burke, played by Isiah Washington until he went Anita Bryant on the set) operating with hand tremors and allowing his intern/fiance (Sandra Oh's Christina Yang) to do his work for him, and the renown plastic surgeon (Eric Dane's Dr. Mark Sloan) who through his lecherous behavior inspired a rebellion of the nursing staff, not to mention enough in-staff hook-ups to make the managers of a swingers' club jealous. It seemed only right that with so much going on that had nothing to with the practice of medicine, the reputation of Seattle Grace had to take a beating.
But not everything changed with the coming of a new season. The on-again, off-again romance between Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) seemed to get a resolution in least year's finale, when Meredith built a "house of candles" on the site Derek picked out for a home for them to share. But Meredith spent the whole two-hour premiere whining and freaking out about her fear of commitment after she asks Derek to move in with her. When Christina finally couldn't take it anymore and yelled at her to shut up, I think she was speaking for most of the viewing audience. I know I, at least, have had it with Meredith's dithering. Let's hope that her decision at the end of the episode to allow Derek to move in with her will end her constant whining and obsessing on the subject. It's time for her to face new demons (of which she obviously has plenty).
And "Grey's" hasn't completely lost its taste for the bizarre medical twist. Christina getting stabbed with a falling icicle was so silly, I couldn't believe I was watching the whole subplot unfold on network television. (I mean, wouldn't it just have melted in a few minutes?)
But I liked the shifted focus of the show. I like what appears to be the overriding plot line for the first part of this season, Chief of Surgery Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) cracking down to make sure that the hospital regains its high standing. When he gave a speech to the doctors about the need for them to get better, it was like Rhimes was speaking through him as to what needs to be done on the show itself. And I liked that the plots were driven by the relationships between the doctors and a handful of interesting -- but plausible -- medical cases. Christina's instant alliance with army surgeon Dr. Own Hunt, played by new cast member Kevin McKidd, might have happened to fast to be believable, but at the same time, it beats the past months of her post-Burke descent into self-pity. I think I'm okay with Dr. Lexie Grey's (Chyler Leigh) possibly unrequited crush on repeating intern Dr. George O'Malley (T.R. Knight). And I thought the subplot about stealing three trauma patients from Seattle Mercy by having their wives request it was entertaining. The story gave three well-regarded older actresses (Bernadette Peters, Kathy Baker and Mariette Hartley) the chance to really tear into some juicy scenes.
In the end, it's just good to see that Rhimes is trying to make "Grey's" better. It's a well-written, well-acted show, and it consistently looks great, too, so with the changes made apparent in the premiere, I'm encouraged that this season will be an improvement over the last.
Rhimes's work on "Private" will be more complicated, and more difficult, though. In my review of the spin-off last season, I lamented that in moving from "Grey's" to her new show, Kate Walsh's Dr. Addison Montgomery had "been reduced to a whiny, neurotic basket case." I went on to note: "For a show written and created by a woman, it's hard to believe how all of the women [on the program] are the embodiments of negative stereotypes." And I wasn't the only one who thought that a lot of work had to be done to bring "Private" up to speed.
I was a bit encouraged by last night's season premiere, since it seemed to me that Rhimes was at least trying to portray Addison as more like the strong, confident surgeon she was on "Grey's." In the episode, she stands up to her best friend, Dr. Naomi Bennett (Audra McDonald), both with a patient (fertility specialist Naomi agreed to get a couple pregnant so they could use the umbilical cord blood to save their dying seven-year-old son, but the son has a week to live, so the couple wants the doctors to induce birth, even though the fetus is only six-months old, something Addison is virulently against) and over the medical practice (administrator Naomi has created a financial mess, but she asks Addison not to tell the others, including her ex-husband Dr. Sam Bennett, played by Taye Diggs).
It was nice to see flashes of the "old" Addison. She was confident even in her indecision as she decided whether to accede to the advances of her brooding colleague Dr. Pete Wilder (Tim Daly) and/or the questionably dependable cop she met last season, Kevin Nelson (David Sutcliffe). And, maybe most encouragingly, Addison is back doing surgery.
Now it's time to rehabilitate everyone else in her practice. Naomi spent all of last season stress eating and pouting over the demise of her marriage. Not much has changed, at least not yet, based on her dour demeanor yesterday. And while psychiatrist Dr. Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman) is no longer insanely and pathetically stalking her ex, she is still a needy mess, pestering her best buddy, Dr. Cooper Freedman (Paul Adelstein), about taking their annual vacation together. But Cooper is sleeping on the sly with hospital head honcho Dr. Charlotte King (KaDee Strickland), who is still so emotionally shut off she can't handle any emotion with Cooper beyond lust. The characters are making some tiny steps forward, though. Violent recognizes her neediness with Cooper, and Charlotte makes a gesture to Cooper (even if it is a tiny, pathetic one) after cutting down his effort to move their relationship along. The evolution might be small and slow, but kudos to Rhimes for trying.
Ultimately, though, it's not yet enough. "Private" still lacks the snap and bite of "Grey's." Time will tell if the upcoming addition of "Swingtown" star and former "Melrose Place" resident Grant Show, as Addison's brother, will make things better or worse (let's hope he brings more "Swingtown" and less "Melrose Place"). But, in the end, the show will rise and fall with Addison and her fellow doctors. The "Grey's" doctors may not be all that likable, but they have enough interesting stuff going on to keep you interested. The "Private" gang isn't there yet. Rhimes seems to at least understand the problem. And that's half the battle. For both shows.
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