...and our Private Practice coverage at
http://www.jackmyers.com/mediavillage/tvshows/private-practice

This week's episode of Grey's Anatomy was about truth - truth, and nothing but the truth. And it wasn't about the kind of truth that makes the heart swell either. It was about the kind of truth that stings - the painful, brutal truth. But here is what is most true: the fourth season of Grey's Anatomy is missing something. Maybe it's missing heart, or reverence, or simply the presence of the almighty Burke. I don't know. But each episode feels more and more like sitting down to enjoy and savor one of my favorite meals only to find that key ingredients are missing. Something is off. Something tastes spoiled. Something just isn't right.

"If you search for tenderness, it isn't hard to find. But if you look for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind. It always seems to be so hard to give."

Seattle Grace has experienced big changes this season: our bumbling interns have become residents with bumbling interns of their own, Callie ranks above Bailey in the pecking order, Derek is chasing after Meredith, Addison is gone, Burke is gone, and to be quite honest the mastery is gone. For me, what made Grey's Anatomy great, aside from the fabulous storylines, was the separation between the masterful senior residents and the insecure and hungry interns. We cared about Meredith, George, Alex, Izzie and Cristina. We rooted for them as they stood alongside the best of the best in medicine. We watched them stand in awe of these top surgeons and we stood in awe of them too. We respected the talents of Derek, Addison, Burke, Bailey, Richard, and Sloan. We loved to know they were the best in the country. But now, everything is flipped.

I loved the cake. It's important that before I even get into any details about this week's Private Practice, I specify how great the cake plot line was. Every scene involving cake was a scene that I really enjoyed, and given that there were three large homemade cakes, I'm saying that this week was a more than decent episode of Private Practice.

We open up with Addison hating the rain in Los Angeles, getting locked out of her house as she tried to snatch all of her belongings out of the downpour. The whole scene hearkened back to Seattle Addison, and I'm glad she addressed it when she walked into work that morning. Her admitting that the magic she had felt in LA wasn't strong enough seemed to actually be the show's admission that maybe Private Practice isn't as good as Grey's, because the magic just isn't there. But that first step - admitting you have a problem - appears to be the best way down a path to improvement.

What do you do when something or someone has you in its clutches? What do you do when you find yourself at the mercy of a person, a drug, a behavior or a pattern of destruction? From where do you find the strength to take a breath, make a change, and break away? This week's episode of Grey's Anatomy posed those questions. Every character is in battle with personal addictions. Some battles were more obvious than others. But it is the inner battles that are the hardest fought. The inner battles that keep us stuck. If love is the addiction, Seattle Grace hospital is the battlefield. "We are strong. No one can tell us we're wrong. Searching our hearts for so long. Love is a battlefield."

"I guess I'd thought you'd be here forever. Another illusion I chose to create. You don't know what you got until its gone. And I found out just a little too late." "Now being without you takes a lot of getting used to, should learn to live with it but I don't want to. Living without you, is all a big mistake, instead of getting easier, it's the hardest thing to take, I'm addicted to ya babe. You're a hard habit to break."

Part of the appeal of television is suspension of disbelief. Basically, watching a TV show should give you the option to pretend like that couple could work, or that someone could live after ridiculous internal injuries, or maybe, just maybe, you could be a doctor too. The only problem inherent in suspending this disbelief is when a show gets so ridiculous that it no longer is an imaginative exercise, but is instead just dumb. Nobody likes to be taken for an idiot. So, Private Practice, what are you doing?

Firstly, what sane man lets a stripper into his house if he doesn't know who sent her, or why she's there? That's how we open the episode - Sam leaves his shades open, while his friends actually peer into the perfect view of his home from next door, where, but of course, Naomi is coming over to have dinner with Addison. That short explanation is, in fact, as convoluted as it sounds, and as ridiculously irritating.

At the close of last season, the characters and storylines of Grey's Anatomy had been burned ruthlessly to the ground. Shonda Rhimes took a flamethrower to Seattle Grace with the sole intention of rebuilding it again. In the season premiere we watched the groundbreaking. We were not perched to the edge of our seats in anticipation. We were not gasping in awe or cheering for our favorite characters. Instead, we simply watched a new foundation being poured over the remains of last season. "Starting again is part of the plan. I'll be so much stronger holding your hand." We met new characters. We said goodbye to past characters. And we learned what to expect from this season of Grey's Anatomy: Change is inevitable and adapting to change is our only option.

Shonda Rhimes has gone on record several times stating that she doesn't want Private Practice to be considered Grey's 2.0. And the script and characters certainly work toward establishing their own unique appeal, even with Grey's-esque great music in the background. However, I tuned into Private Practice because I love Addison, and if Rhimes wants this show to succeed, there will have to be a balance of Addison's old character with her new persona in California. It's a spin-off - I'm watching this because I watched the parent show and liked it.

I write you as a really depressed viewer at the current state of Grey's Anatomy after the recent "burning down" of the show. The show at it's current state looks pretty much "over."

Shonda Rhimes can "burn it all down" without having to make these silly scenarios of Meredith dying, Ellis dying, Meredith being slapped, Susan dying, without Meredith's young sister hitting on Derek, without CalliGeorgeIzzy triangle, Meredith & Cristina's love story being more important than Meredith and Derek's, Meredith and Derek being pulled apart again.

We could have had some hope going into season 4 that someone had something going for them. For instance, at least Meredith and Derek could have had some kind of encouraging ending but still a cliffhanger, Cristina and Burke could have run off to city hall to get married... something, anything.

Shonda Rhimes had promised in an earlier podcast that the finale would "burn things to the ground". She certainly did do that! This season finale leads us toward a season four unlike the three before it and I say, in the words of the famous Martha Stewart, "That's a good thing!"

Click here to read the rest of Grey's Anatomy: It's All SOooooo Over

Creator and Executive Producer, Shonda Rhimes, spent the third season of Grey's Anatomy building great, big, skyscraper-sized stories. Brick upon brick she built the unrequited love stories, the loss, the hope, the friendships, the dreams and the plans of our beloved characters. Then, in the finale episode titled, "Didn't We Almost Have it All", she picked up a flame-thrower and burned it all to the ground. She did this with good reason. She did this to give herself a place from which to build next season. But for those of us who had invested our hearts into these stories and characters, the burn hurt a bit.

"He said, I'm going to buy this place and burn it down. I'm going to put it six feet underground. He said, I'm going to buy this place and watch it fall. Stand here beside me baby in the crumbling walls."

Grey's Anatomy took one step closer to its season finale with this week's episode titled, "Testing 1-2-3". There were too many tests, too many questions and too much left unanswered. Lives ridden with tests. Day to day circumstances--the mistakes, the triumphs, the discoveries, and the betrayals-that serve as report cards testing levels of personal growth. Life lessons are like study guides (that we must repeat until learned) that prepare us for these unexpected tests. Some tests come with No. 2 pencils and multiple-choice questions, some with biblical "Job-like" wrath and famine, some with painful needles and heart monitors but the most difficult tests to pass are those with no explanation, no warning and no right answers.

Even for the most loyal devotee, two hours straight is a whole lotta Grey's, so I'm hoping that when Addison's show does arrive this fall, as I'm sure it will, ABC doesn't put it directly after Grey's at 9P CST on Thursdays. It's true that one can have too much of a good thing.

Click here to read the rest of A Double Dose of Grey's

ABC 's Grey's Anatomy swept the Thursday night (9-11pm) timeslot averaging 20.97 million viewers with this week's episode titled, "The Other Side of This Life." It was a two-hour extended episode that introduced a possible spin-off of the tentatively titled Private Practice. Whether in Seattle or Santa Monica, these people are dreaming. Dreaming of better lives, dreaming of escapes and dreaming of love, sweet love. It is easy to feel trapped and natural to want to run. At Seattle Grace, these doctors were born to run.

Unbeknownst to Cristina, her mother and Burke's "momma" are in town to help plan their wedding. If there was every a time to run, it would be now Cristina. The mothers have decided there must be colorful flowers, a big white dress and sugary sweet bridesmaids. Come on now ladies. The robot in a white coat can't get married under such conditions. Cristina agreed to a beige and impersonal city hall type wedding. Burke knows who she is, why does he expect her to change? Miraculously, Cristina goes with the pressure flow and participated in rounding up some bridesmaids. She started by asking Callie to be in the wedding, which one can assume she did in a state of delirium because she barely ever speaks to her. Callie fittingly accepted the honor by silently mouthing, "I'm gonna kill you" to Cristina. Sugary sweet indeed.

...is, of course, the two hour Grey's Anatomy, airing tonight. If you don't live under a rock, you've already heard probably more than you'd like about tonight's episode. It will combine the typical hour of SGH cases, love, and angst with Burketina wedding preps (sure to be amusing.) and Addison's road trip to LA which will serve as a springboard for a spin off show starring Kate Walsh.

Click here to read the rest of The Two Hour Event Everyone is Talking About!