Episode Report Card Mollie: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Oceanside And Too Many Babies
By Mollie | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.13.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Addison and Pete are getting hot and heavy at work, and this time it's not a dream. Pete and his fancy lips convince Addison to agree to a sex-date that night. Naomi questions this decision, and defensive Addy insists she's not just settling for Pete because she's lonely and desperate. Speaking of lonely and desperate, Violet, also looking to scratch her itch, proposes a "friends with benefits" plan to Cooper, who's all for it. Pete cautions against it, but Cooper, predictably, doesn't care.
The possibility of an inconvenient pregnancy is just one reason the docs shouldn't sleep together, but it's the one we'll be focusing on tonight. Our first mom is Susan, a young policeman's widow with a detailed birth plan. She's doing fine 'til a bunch of her dead husband's LAPD colleagues show up at Oceanside to support her, and memories of her husband trigger panic attacks. Pete, Addison, and Violet cooperate to calm her down.
Mom #2 is Ashley, reporting for a checkup with her useless husband and three rowdy sons. Addison informs her she's in labor, which I guess she didn't notice because she was busy dealing with her horrible family.
Mom number 3 is Kelly (Sara Gilbert), who decided robbing the convenience store where her baby's father (her ex) works would be the best way to provide for their unborn child. We learn all this over the course of several increasingly stupid scenes after Sam shows up, thinking he's paying a house call, only to find one of his patients is a hostage. Of course, Kelly's water breaks, and Sam calls Naomi for help delivering the baby -- leaving out the parts about the gun and the holdup. Meanwhile, Dell delivers Ashley's baby: a boy! Ashley was expecting a girl, and she's so undone by the prospect of adding another male to her already nightmarish household that the Oceanside team stages a mini-intervention to tell her useless husband to shape up.
Convenience-store robber Kelly finally puts down the gun (after smacking Sam with it), while Susan at Oceanside freaks out and can only be calmed by Addison's climbing into the birthing tub to hold her while she pushes. When Kelly's baby girl is born, the store-clerk dad looks on lovingly, and Sam calls the cops. Addison brings Susan's newborn son out to the lobby to show him off to the many LAPD officers assembled there. The cutest of the bunch asks Addy out for a drink, but she turns him down, thinking of her plans with Pete.
At Violet's, Cooper and Vi strip down, but at the sight of Violet naked, Cooper balks, protesting that sex with her could never be "meaningless." She kicks him out, and he heads over to Addison's. She's waiting there in a sexy robe, having been stood up by Pete. Coop and Addy bemoan their stupidity. Pete shows up at Violet's, ready to tell her about how he and his dead wife were trying to have a baby. Sam returns to Oceanside and finds Naomi there. She's shocked by his bloodied face and shirt, and the rush of emotion has them going at it on the conference-room table in no time flat. If you picked Naomi and Sam in the who'll-sleep-together-first pool, you win! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
This week we open with an aerial shot of an amusement park (pardon my East-Coast ignorance, but I think it's Santa Monica Pier), to let us know that this episode is going to be one crazy roller-coaster ride! Okay, that's not the first image that comes to my mind, but I guess a garbage dump wouldn't look so pretty from the air. We then find Addison at the clinic, busying herself in an exam room as the Fine Young Cannibals' "Good Thing" plays jauntily in the background. Pete walks in and leans against a wall. Addison greets him, and he remains moodily silent, so she says, "What?" In case you forgot what happened at the end of the last episode, Pete offers a quick recap: "You kissed me. And then you walked away." Addison smiles a smug little smile. "Messing with your head, huh?" she taunts, and he guesses this means, "It was a revenge kiss." She tells him that she didn't intend to screw with him, but she has been enjoying watching him squirm ever since. Pete responds by grabbing Addison forcefully, hoisting her onto a nearby counter and sucking her face. Lucky for him, she enjoys this treatment. The music bumps up as they make out, and after a few gropey moments, Pete pulls away and whispers, "I think we should stop kissing." Addison's face falls. She lets out a sad-puppy whimper. Then she realizes he means they should stop just kissing, and she brightens: "Oh." Pete's rationale is, "Come on, what are we, 12?" Addison breathes, "No, we definitely are not..." Not physically, anyway. However, that supposed maturity is why she's resisting becoming another of Pete's casual conquests. Pete thinks they should just "see how it goes...tonight," and another kiss from his fancy lips is all the encouragement Addy needs. The music vamps on as they smooch, and then stops abruptly as Dell opens the exam-room door. He sees Pete and Addy in their compromising position and gives them a fabulously patronizing smile. They try to come up with an excuse for why they're pressed against each other, out of breath and flushed about the lips, and Dell just keeps grinning at this pathetic display. "Locked in the old Dell Vault," he says, pointing to his blond surfer head. As he walks away, he adds, "Your patients are here." Left alone, Pete and Addy giggle about being locked in the "Dell Vault," that repository of women's-studies buzzwords, encyclopedic knowledge of the female anatomy, repressed memories of childhood abuse, and detailed fantasies about Naomi.
In the Oceanside kitchen, Violet opens the fridge and pulls out a black-as-pitch banana. Ew. She wants to know what dumb-ass keeps sticking bananas in the refrigerator. Addison fesses up -- I'd have bet on Cooper, myself, but perhaps blackened bananas are a key ingredient in Addison's nasty green smoothies. Vi gives her a brief and bitchy (but apparently necessary) lecture about how one does not refrigerate tropical fruit. Those assembled -- Addy, Naomi, Cooper -- exchange "What's up her ass?" looks, but say nothing. Pete strolls in to announce, "Susan McCullough is on her way in." Naomi starts to ask about how this Susan person is doing, but she's interrupted when cranky Violet barks at Sam for blocking the toaster. On his way out, Cooper mutters, "Somebody really needs to get..." Violet cuts him off: "Don't say it!" and Cooper protests that he wasn't going to say "laid." Come on, Coop, we all know the pattern by now: if you get to the first commercial break and Cooper hasn't said anything that qualifies as sexual harassment, you're not watching Private Practice. When Violet turns away, Coop and Sam silently agree that she really does need to get laid. Then Coop makes his exit and Addison gets the exposition back on track: "So we're inducing Susan today, right?" Violet, busy with the toaster, says it's very important that they follow Susan's "birth plan" to the letter -- even though it involves Pete the quack's relaxation techniques and a session in the "birthing tub." Addison wrinkles her nose at this last detail. She's not a "birthing tub" kind of gal, what with all the "fluids" involved: "blood, uterine tissue, sometimes fecal matter..." Sam, still in the kitchen, loses his appetite and sets down his yogurt in disgust. He hurries out, and Addison picks up the yogurt and eats it (ha!) as she concludes, "There's a reason they don't use those things in hospitals." Petulant Pete says Susan is his patient and they're doing this the way she wants. Addison says, "Well, I'm not really comfortable being a...birth coach," pronouncing this last phrase the way you might say "crack whore." Or "network executive." Threatened, Pete counters, "That's not what I do." Addy preps to deliver a stinging comeback, but Violet kills the mood by sharing Susan's tragic backstory: She was widowed a few months ago, when Jason, her cop husband, was killed in the line of duty. Pete adds that Susan has been prone to panic attacks, which obviously isn't something you want to happen during labor, so they really have to be careful with her. Chastened, Addison agrees to ask Dell to prepare the tub. Pete watches appreciatively as she walks away. And when I say "appreciatively," I mean that he's appreciating her ass. Violet Crankypants finds this workplace lusting even more disgusting than Addison's black banana.