I know I said I wasn't stupid enough to watch the Forty-somethings Behaving Badly show "Private Practice." Apparently, I have no more self-control than the denizens of Oceanside.
Tonight's segment was called "In Which Sam Gets Taken For a Ride." But as usual, it's the hapless viewer who gets caught up in traffic.
No surprise here, but Dr. Addison, the neonatal surgeon who now delivers babies in swimming pools, and Dr. Violet, the neurotic shrink (shrinking Violet?!), have decided to have no-strings, sport sex with inappropriate men who also happen to be partners in their practice (Dr. Pete, crunchy granola alternative medicine man, and Dr. Cooper, whose specialty seems to be having sex with women he meets on the Internet).
The contorted logic Addison and Vi use to justify these decisions make it clear why they are in a medical show and not a legal one.
Meanwhile, other women who had sex nine months earlier are having babies.
The first, an immense fertility goddess with three hyperactive sons and a giant sloth for a husband, placidly pops out her baby with barely a grunt. So far, so good. But when it turns out that the baby is not the girl she expected but another boy, she shifts gears.
"You shove that baby right back in there and bring out a girl," she hollars. And she means it.
I half expected the accommodating doctors in this boutique practice to do as she asked. After all, she might have whole racks of babies in there from which to choose. But alas. Instead, Vi summons her psychoanalytic skills to say there must be a reason she had a boy, and that's because the world needs more good men.
Looking at Giant Sloth, Fertility Goddess sneers. Thank goodness one woman here is in touch with reality.
Actually, there seem to be plenty of good men in this segment. In the waiting room are dozens of cops, all of whom look like male models, waiting for the wife of a fallen brother to give birth.
In the swimming pool. While having a simultaneous nervous breakdown. And screaming really a lot.
One of the cops holds some promise for Addison, who does that little thing she does with parting her lips, making a mouth, and raising an eyebrow, which was adorable the first two or three hundred times but is growing just a teensy bit old. For a moment, we think she may come to her senses and choose a man who is psychologically sound enough to be a police officer. But that would be too healthy.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sam, who doesn't know nothing about birthing babies but has a cell phone and an ex-wife (Dr. Naomi) who does, is trying to bandage a gunshot wound and deliver a baby at gunpoint. He has been lured to a convenience store, making a house call for a stripper patient with a skin rash, which doesn't sound like a medical emergency to me, but this is California.
I'm not even going to try to explain that, but suffice it to say that the woman in labor shot the man, who is her baby dady; forced the stripper to call Sam; and whapped Sam upside the head with the gun to persuade him to deliver her baby.
Sheesh. All she had to do was ask.
Her poor manners aren't really surprising, though: in another series, she was raised by Roseanne Bahr.
Sam feels the need to take off his shirt to deliver the baby, which certainly made me feel good and even fleetingly understand the rutting behavior of Addison and Violet, who are clearly hankering after the wrong men.
Blessedly, the shirt stays off for the rest of the show.
But it's not Violet and Addison who get lucky in the end. Strange twists of fate send Cooper, who can't bare his butt in front of Violet, to commiserate with Addision, and Pete to bare his soul to Violet, while Sam takes a ride for old times's sake with Naomi right there in the boardroom.
I guess there's a message there somewhere.
