'Grey's Anatomy,' 'Private Practice' are adrift

Of the two, "Grey's" has the heavier burden and the most ground to regain. In addition to Heigl's and Knight's troubles, the show has let its best characters go to waste. Hospital chief Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) has been single-mindedly and unpleasantly focused on raising the hospital's ranking, to the detriment of the often tender story lines involving his strained relationship with his wife, Adele (Loretta Devine). And what about the secret surgery society spurred on by new intern Sadie Harris (a woefully misused Melissa George)? And Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) asking Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) to seduce Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) so she won't distract Meredith from their cohabiting bliss? Sloan failing? And then taking up with Lexie over Derek's protestations?

Combine these story line twists with the increasingly improbable surgical procedures the show highlights -- fecal transplant? -- and "Grey's Anatomy" is increasingly resembling science fiction.

"Private Practice," at least, appears to be nominally grounded in this mortal coil, if only that. Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) was never fully nourished on "Grey's" and has therefore long had difficulty anchoring her own series. At least last season, when she was the center of romantic intrigue on this show, she exerted a primal pull. This year, though, she's had all the warmth of a schoolmarm, with a love life in neutral and an increasingly unsatisfying professional life.

Meanwhile, the characters Addison used to help ground are now adrift. Her likely love interest, Pete Wilder (Tim Daly), was momentarily derailed by an old flame, Meg Porter (Jayne Brook), leaving the formerly swaggering doc a virtual mute. As feuding couple Sam (Taye Diggs) and Naomi Bennett (Audra McDonald) fight to rescue their business from financial ruin, they discover that a rival practice is opening one floor upstairs, spearheaded by their sometime colleague Charlotte King (KaDee Strickland).

That Charlotte has become the axis around which most of this show's intrigue revolves only highlights how thin the central characters have become and how many of the show's initial charms have been neutered. The vivid sexual confusion between Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman) and Cooper Freedman (Paul Adelstein) has been completely sacrificed so that Cooper could play out his ridiculous affair with Charlotte, whose character has resisted all attempts at softening -- sea changes in hair, makeup and wardrobe be damned.

Some bright spots have emerged this season -- a brief guest run by Brian Benben as Sheldon, a smirking but awkward therapist from the rival practice; a couple of cases in which Cooper trumps his own lecherousness to be the great pediatrician he knows himself to be capable of being -- but the show's stasis has been best encapsulated by Addison's cop boyfriend, Kevin Nelson (David Sutcliffe). He's taken several hits this season -- shot in the line of duty, told by Addison's brother that she was slumming it with him -- and he spent a couple of episodes bedridden at Addison's house, recovering, as Addison let their relationship fester. But in the show's last episode before the holiday, even he threw on some clothes and walked out -- if he hadn't, he might have been stuck there forever, waiting for change that was never to come.

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