PRIVATE PRACTICE: THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON
(not rated)
MOVIE: * (out of 5)
BLU-RAY EXPERIENCE: ** (out of 5)
Created by: Shonda Rimes
BY KEVIN CARR
If you liked the first four seasons of “Private Practice” with the bizarre disease-of-the-week mixed with complicated medial issue-of-the-week, featuring beautiful people with plenty of money who just can’t seem to get their shit together, you’ll like the continuing storyline from the fifth season as well.
However, if you’re like me, it will be an excruciating experience. This season of Shonda Rimes other medical drama continues to complicate people’s lives in an ever-ludicrous way, and it manages to pull out some of the biggest cliches in television writing. The characters flop into and out of relationships, and this season focuses on Addison (Kate Walsh) trying to fulfill her pointless dream of having a baby. That’s bad enough, considering Addison (along with the other characters on the show) are shallow narcissists who would make (or have made) godawful parents. But the show goes beyond that.
The underlying drama in this season is that Cooper (Paul Adelstein) has an 8-year-old son he didn’t know about. Sigh… this is not an original television story, folks. More unoriginality is added with the wretched asshole of a character Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) slipping back into drug use and the not-quite-real-world consequences of her actions. I wish this character would die already.
Filled with preaching by people who have no business preaching about life and condescending dialogue, “Private Practice: The Complete Fifth Season” is as bad as the first four.
On the plus side, for being the fifth season of a series, it’s nice that this set actually still has some special features. They’re a little slim, but that’s understandable considering previous seasons weren’t packed with them, and most shows end up burning through all of their potential bonus material by the season three release.
Features include deleted scenes from select episodes as well as a mix of bloopers. The only featurette included is “The Practice of Parenthood” which shows the good intentions of the showrunners Shonda Rimes and Betsy Beers. However, this is just a patch for the pretty terrible episodes featuring poorly written children throughout the season.