This week on Private Practice we saw exactly how everyone has been handling Pete’s (and Mark Sloan’s) loss. It’s not particularly pretty — the characters have all been stripped down to raw emotions hiding behind their various attempts at covering them up. Violet’s attending a support group, Addison is literally hiding, Sam is deflecting everyone’s attempts to help him out, and Cooper has become even more protective, if that’s at all possible.
Throughout the episode Violet spends a lot of time in a group therapy session for grief, listening to others’ stories about what they’re going through, and in her office, trying to council her newest patient, a man named Adam. During his session Adam’s regret and grief reveal that he shot a man eleven years ago while he was attempting a robbery, but despite the doctor-patient confidentiality policy, Violet cannot resist the urge to learn more about the shooting.
When she discovers just what happened, she feels her own regret at her actions and goes to Sheldon with her uncertainty, who tells her that she’s become too close, that now she’s judging her patient and needs to get him to a new therapist. She turns to Charlotte, asking how does one make things right if you’ve killed someone. Charlotte explains to her that you may not be able to apologize, but it’s best to live your amends and make yourself a better person. After apologizing when she looses control and blasts Adam for his apparent lack of guilt, she shares Charlotte’s insight, and as Sheldon told her to do in the first place, finds him a new therapist.
For Addison, the episode took her through her own stages of grief, namely denial and withdraw, and finally her letting go when she lets herself open up to Jake about her past. Jake struggles through the hour, trying to get her to share, even going so far as to ask Sam to talk to Addison. But Sam is struggling with his own avoidance issues when his ‘girlfriend,’ nurse Stephanie begins to question why she doesn’t know much about him. It becomes a ‘practice what you preach’ matter when Sam tells Addison that yes, she should be honest with Jake, even though it takes him the entire episode to do the same.
The effect of Pete’s death is also seen rather painfully with Charlotte and Cooper. When talking to Violet at the hospital, Charlotte tells her how supportive Pete was after her rape, calling him her ‘work husband.’ She misses him. For Coop, Pete’s death pushes him into a state of heightened concern, especially when he can’t get a hold of Charlotte during one of her many late ER shifts. As he tells his wife, no one had heard from Pete and he had died – it’s his job to protect his wife and children.
As for Sheldon, remember the mysterious test results from his physical with Sam back in the premiere? He may have prostate cancer, yet as he tells Sam, very angrily, he might not want to know — he could die with it, not from it. Later, it comes out that Sheldon’s father had the disease, and let it take his ambition for life away. Sheldon doesn’t want that to happen to him.
As the episode comes to a close Violet shares her story with the group, explaining how Lucas has been asking repeatedly where Daddy is, and how it breaks her heart to tell her son that his father’s not coming home. The story ends with one of the most touching moments of the series — Violet tucks Lucas into bed and he tells her that he loves her, before looking up and whispering “I love you too, Daddy.”
As Violet explains during the episode, everyone experiences the five stages of grief differently, and after last week’s memorial of Pete, this week’s exploration into the aftermath showed just that. Based on what we’ve seen so far this season, it seems to me that the potentially final episodes of Private Practice will delve more into the characters themselves rather than medical cases, putting them through trying and desperate situations, and cutting right to the heart of their lives.
What do you think of Private Practice‘s new emotional focus?
Private Practice airs Tuesday nights at 10/9c on ABC.
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