Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Switcheroo!
By DeAnn Welker | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.22.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Change is in the air at Oceanside Wellness and Pacific Wellcare (don't you just love how they have the same name?) this week, with doctors switching jobs all over the place. But we'll get to that. First, there's our patient of the week: a little boy whose mom is a 15-year-old homeless girl. Cooper, Addison, and Sam meet her at a homeless shelter and when they realize the boy has serious heart problems, they bring him in. Sam wants to operate on him for free, knowing no one else will do it, but Addison tells him he can't just jump back into surgery. Addison opts to call the girl's mom instead. That turns out to be a disaster, sending the girl and her boy back out onto the street, where the boy's condition worsens. But Coop and Addison find them, Sam operates, and then the young mom makes peace with her own mother. It's actually touching, despite the After School Special sentimentality.
In Violet's land of the dark and dreary, she's trying to help a married couple after the wife's been raped. The husband won't look at her, and -- oh, by the way! -- she's pregnant. And it turns out to be the rapist's. Her husband storms out when he hears she wants to keep it, but then Violet talks her into an abortion and all seems okay for the couple. Violet realizes she shouldn't actually tell patients to do things like have abortions, though, so she calls them both in to sort out what they really want, instead of making it all about Violet yet again. We don't get to hear their decision, but this is network TV, so we all know there was no abortion. When she's not busy being a bad therapist, Violet's ignoring Lucas and Pete. Until he ultimately decides to take a job working for Naomi so that she doesn't have to look at him every day.
At the practice, Addison and Sam decide not to replace Naomi, and instead want each doctor to pony up $50,000 to buy her shares. Everyone writes a check, like, that instant, except Coop, who's broke. Charlotte's home moping and remodeling his bathroom and billing him for it, so he finally caves and tells her he's broke. This leads to her giving Addison and Sam $50,000 for Cooper and a blank check for her. She's joining the practice; y'all better watch out.
Dell's back, too: worried about Betsey being in school, and dealing with a panicky mom-to-be. And Sheldon's claiming turf in his attempts to get over losing his fake girlfriend and fake baby to Pete.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!At this point, I shouldn't have to tell you there are no previouslies. Instead, we open on a weird split screen of ocean and trees, as Sam says, "I forgot about the adrenaline rush." We zoom in on the left (trees) to see Sam and Addison hiking. She tells him she knows; he needs to hike more often. But he's like, "No. Surgery." She agrees it's amazing, and nothing beats it -- "Not sex..." But he interrupts: "Sex beats it." Addison says she wouldn't know, since it's been so long. She says it's like an old Western town down there, and Sam plugs his ears. She rambles on about tumbleweeds and a sheriff as he says, "Please stop talking. Please stop talking. Please stop talking." Okay, it's official: I adore this friendship. He changes the subject, since they have business to talk about. They have to decide whether to replace Naomi or what to do with her shares. Addison agrees and already came up with a figure for buying out her shares. She was going to make the suggestion to the others today. He thinks that's perfect. She tells him that, even without adding someone, they could have another surgeon at the practice: Sam.
At the practice, Violet's in the elevator when Pete runs up to catch it. He has Lucas with him when he gets into the elevator. She doesn't look at Lucas and gives Pete a cold "Good morning." He tells her the nanny had a cold and he didn't want Lucas to get it, and he'll try to keep him out of the way. She says, "Well, have a good day" when she gets out of the elevator. Dell's already at work and already mopey again, with his head laying on the desk when Addison comes in wearing an adorable red dress with white floral print on it. She's happy to see him back (that makes two of us), as he tells her how hard it was to let Betsey go to her first day at a new school, since she grabbed onto his leg and didn't want to let him go. Addison looks at a picture of Betsey on his desk and reassures him, then tells him he can take off early to check on her if he needs to. A young pregnant girl comes in and tells Dell her contractions are here, and he gets up to get her settled. Addison welcomes him back.
In Violet's office, Tracie Thoms (how cool that the show keeps getting Taye's Rent castmates to guest?) and a handsome man who's presumably her husband are sitting on the couch. She tells Violet that he won't even look at her. He protests, but she says that's what it feels like. He stammers that, "It's just... Ever since..." Violet finishes: "The rape? It's okay to say it. Sometimes it helps." But he doesn't want to bring it up, because of Collette (that would be Tracie). She asks if he thinks she might forget it happened if he doesn't bring it up. And Violet agrees that that's the thing: It happened. And if he can't deal with it for his wife, they won't be able to move forward together. Ty gets up to leave, and Collette asks him to wait by the elevators because she has to use the restroom. But what she does instead is stay behind in Violet's office and confess that she's pregnant, which should be great news because they've wanted it for so long, but she's eight weeks along so she doesn't know if it's Ty's or the rapist's. Jarringly sunny title card.