Spin Off Doctors

While watching last night's two-hour Grey's Anatomy, I found myself enjoying the scenes introducing Addison's spinoff more than the regular storylines, which seemed a bit repetitive. Three-fourths of the episode was devoted to Kate Walsh as Addison, who went down to Santa Monica on a leave of absence to visit old friends and meet her new costars. It started out a bit cheesy, with the very first scene edited in '80s-music-video style so that Addison was shifting the gears of her lipstick-red convertible to the beat of the New Wave-y soundtrack as she drove along the ocean. Thinks picked up right away when she rolled up to the Oceanside Wellness Group, the swank-hippie New Age medicine hut where, before too long, she'll presumably be hanging her shingle.

The characters look older than the cast of Grey's and they're hornier too. So far it's a funky combo. The place is run by Sam (Taye Diggs), a health guru who just divorced Addison's med-school classmate Naomi (Merrin Dungey). In an early scene, regarding his and Addison's divorces, Sam actually used the line "Smelt it, dealt it" to support some point he was making, and Addison replied, "You're using fart logic?" That almost ruined it but it was just a blip. Also, both of the Oceanside medical cases this evening were about sex: One was about a guy who didn't want to sleep with his wife ("No wood?" Sam asked sensitively); the other was about a surrogate mom who had sex with three guys. Sex, sex, sex, dirty, dirty, dirty.

While this new setting isn't yet at Seattle Grace, status, it shows great potential. It does seem a bit more frothier, brighter, and sometimes funnier. I never knew Kate Walsh could be funny. She was also affecting when Addison found out she can't have kids. In the elevator on her first trip into the Oceanside building, Addison started babbling to a doc (played by Tim Daly) about how it's nice, for once, to be in an "unhorny" elevator. It was hilarious because of how "out there" it was. There was also that bit where the lady doctors — including Amy Brenneman as the in-house shrink — ogled the shirtless desk clerk while his right pec pumped in time with his strokes as he waxed his surfboard in the lobby. That was funny and kind of hot.

Now over to Seattle Grace. Okay, there's Bailey. As always, there's Bailey. As underutilized as ever, she essentially had one scene. And it was good. Mopey O'Malley was eating his own organs up over Izzie again this week, and at the clinic he came right out and asked Bailey if she ever had any doubts about her marriage. She ran away from him fast. Then Burke, deep into planning his own wedding with the uncooperative Cristina, came in a scene or two later and asked Bailey a marriage question of his own. So she called O'Malley over, worked up a head of steam, and told the boys, Bailey-style, to talk to each other, "and leave my marriage out of it!"

Chandra Wilson is — I think it's safe to call it now, two eps from the finale — season 3's MVP. Her version of "God Bless the Child" from last fall is one of the season's top moments, and throughout the year she's reliably delivered. Unfortunately, Bailey has dropped out of the picture for much of the second half of the season, but Wilson's managed to steal most of the few scenes she's still in. (Standing among her castmates as the pants went down last week, her reaction shot to Grapefruit Testicles' displayed goods was the keeper of the pack.) Last night's freak-out at O'Malley and Burke wasn't a classic Bailey bit, and it wouldn't be worth singling out like this except that it was, like, the only good moment in the Grey's part of the whole two-hour epic.

Maybe I exaggerate. Some of the other scenes at Seattle Grace hit par. Izzie and George kissed some more in the elevator, and — to all of America's shock, I'm sure — Callie didn't catch them in the act when the doors opened. (She was right there, of course, when the doors opened, but George had pulled himself off Izzie by then.) Meredith, meanwhile, tossed off a few well-turned lines to Derek at the beginning of the episode about how he shouldn't give up on her because she wants to let him in. He smiled, she smiled. Then her stepmom got the hiccups and died. Meredith had to tell her dad, whom she'd been bonding with all night, and Jeff Perry, who plays Thatcher, did some of the most realistic breaking down I've ever seen on TV, at least until he slapped Meredith. ("I trusted you!) What an ass.

That's my take. I'm just wondering if Burke and Cristina will really be together forever and make it down the aisle. I also want Callie to find out about George and Izzie next week, or at least realize she already know because I think she is in denial about ti. Or do we have to wait until the season finale for that?