Grey Co. goes private

KATE WALSH'S Addison Forbes Montgomery (formerly Shepherd) wouldn't have been my first guess as to who would be the agent of a "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff, but she's a good choice, and I am glad for her sake that she is getting out of there. Of all the mopey players in that cramped, insular dating pool, superstar OB-GYN Addison seemed nearly alone in possessing some actual capacity for happiness. (Apart from Bailey, whose personal life is protected in some privileged extracurricular space, and the woefully abused Callie, she's the only character I'd want to meet for coffee in, you know, that world where we can meet fictional people for coffee.) Her brightness owes something, I am sure, to Walsh's own red hair and blue eyes -- she looks like she's made of candy -- but in any case it craves a clearer light than Seattle gray.

That is really the premise of "Private Practice" (premiering tonight on ABC), which sends Addison south to a new job at a Santa Monica "wellness center," a house on the beach and a cast of new colleagues who, though as screwy as the ones she's leaving, are at least new to us -- we have not had three years to watch them throw away every good thing that comes their way. The title of tonight's episode, "In Which We Meet Addison, a Nice Girl From Somewhere Else," reflects that whole clean slate thing. (On screen, it's represented by Addison's dancing naked in her new digs.) But new beginnings can be difficult; there are problems here, though they are not irremediable. By and large the show improves on its pilot, which was sneaked last season into an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" as Addison visited old friend and fertility specialist Naomi (played then by Merrin Dungey, now by Audra McDonald) in hopes of getting pregnant. It has relaxed a little into itself.

Actors can flow from role to role usually without troubling our sense of who they are, but characters are less flexible, more fragile. The audience knows them intimately; it can smell inconsistency. (And will blog about it too.) One reason why "Grey's Anatomy" itself can be so exasperating is that the doctors of Seattle Grace are continually forced into unlikely new relationships to keep things novel; the actors must spin and re-spin their characters to accommodate the latest interpersonal plot twist. It's crucial that we can see the Addison we already know in the Addison we meet anew.