Chances are, if you’re a fan of Grey’s Anatomy, you have likely also watched Private Practice. After all, it’s a sequel to Grey’s and another phenomenal addition to Shondaland. Private Practice follows Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) as she leaves Seattle for California and joins a small medical practice. It’s a rather noticeable change from her time on Grey’s, as the practice is smaller and more intimate, so her patient volume is substantially less. Private Practice allowed fans to spend more time with Addison and get to know her outside of Derek (Patrick Dempsey). We get to see her more playful side and see just how brilliant a doctor she truly is, and we also get to see the deeper, more emotional side of her life and really connect with her throughout the series. But it wasn’t just Addison’s character that gave us this change — it was the show as a whole. Private Practice in itself is a much more grounded and mature version of Grey’s Anatomy. Though both shows are medical dramas rife with romance, scandals, and some fairly absurd storylines, Private Practice opted to go a different route than its sister series and gave us a much more raw depiction of life as a doctor.
‘Private Practice’ Isn’t Afraid to Get Real
When Private Practice began, it seemed a bit quirkier than Grey’s Anatomy. We moved the location from rainy, gray Seattle to sunny California, and as a result, the scripts felt brighter and more peppy. And since the cast was substantially smaller than that of Grey’s, there was a lot more room for humor because the show wasn’t bouncing around all the time. We got to know these characters off the bat and bonded with them immediately, and we saw that they were more of a family than just colleagues. The majority of the first season is laying out that groundwork, so by the time Season 2 comes along, the show is able to delve into more fleshed-out storylines and more intricate character development. It still holds onto the lightheartedness but opts to use it as a break from the heavier moments throughout the episode.
From Season 2 on, Private Practice takes on a more mature role. It starts introducing bleaker storylines and digging into topics that, at the time, were fairly taboo. Topics like abortion, addiction, and PTSD were all things you didn’t often see depicted on TV at the time, and Private Practice delved into them head-on. We see Violet (Amy Brenneman), the practice’s psychologist, deal with her own trauma and PTSD — and we go through every stage of healing with her. We meet Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) and stay with her through her battle with addiction and, eventually, the death of her baby. We hold Addison’s hand through her fertility issues and her adoption journey. And we watch as Charlotte (KaDee Strickland) and Cooper (Paul Adelstein) are thrown into parenthood when it’s revealed Cooper has a son, and the boy’s mom is dying. And that’s just to name a few. Private Practice never shied away from digging into the topics that made others hide. It always went into them with 100% certainty and an affection for the story they were planning to tell. It was often heart-wrenching and tough to watch, but it allowed the show to feel a lot more grounded and poignant.
‘Private Practice’ Peeled Back the Medical Show Curtain
Aside from dealing with the more taboo topics, which were not often approached on TV at the time, Private Practice also offered a new perspective on medical dramas. With medical shows, and honestly, most shows based on some sort of reality, there has to be a suspension of disbelief. If everything went according to plan and was done completely by the book, it just wouldn’t make for good TV. Private Practice knew this but opted to deal with it in a different way. Rather than just letting its characters squeak by when they do something wrong, it yanks down the curtain and shows you what happens in the aftermath.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Tackles a Topic That ‘Private Practice’ Doesn’t
Out of the two shows, Private Practice tends to portray vulnerable and real-world topics more often than Grey’s Anatomy does. But there is one instance where Grey’s tackles a topic Private Practice rarely does, and that’s domestic violence. Aptly titled “1-800-799-7233” which is the number of the domestic violence hotline, the episode features the return of Jo Wilson’s (Camilla Luddington) estranged and abusive husband, Paul (Matthew Morrison). He’s arrived in Seattle because he’s engaged to a woman named Jenny (Joy Lenz), and they want to get married, only he’s still legally married to Jo, so he tracked her down despite her name change and change of location.
Jo makes it her mission to try and save Jenny from Paul before it’s too late, and though she initially denies the abuse, she later comes to the hospital with Paul after he’s involved in a hit-and-run and confirms to Jo that he had hurt her too. It’s an extremely heavy arc of episodes, but it’s also one of the most powerful and important stories that Grey’s Anatomy has told.
The show may not always delve into the nitty gritty storylines, but when it does, it does so with so much delicacy and care, creating a memorable and profound episode of the show’s history. That doesn’t mean Grey’s Anatomy was without its powerful moments, but it doesn’t prioritize them as often as Private Practice did, which is a shame. A show as hugely popular as Grey’s Anatomy telling stories such as Jo and Jenny’s allows such topics to reach a larger audience and raise helpful awareness for those who survive in silence.
‘Private Practice’ Prioritizes Emotional Storylines
One of Private Practice‘s most memorable episodes is “Did You Hear What Happened to Charlotte King?” in which Charlotte is brutally attacked by a patient. It’s an extremely hard episode to watch, but the show handled it with grace. Shonda Rhimes and KaDee Strickland worked closely with RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network) on the storyline to best portray the arc with as much care and dignity as possible while remaining true to real victim’s experiences. The result is a heartbreaking yet beautiful storyline that remains one of Private Practice‘s best and most impressive.
At the end of the day, both Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy are brilliantly done shows and follow a fairly similar story and format. But it’s how the two shows approach their storylines and characters that set them apart. Granted, they have two completely different settings, which certainly adds to the differences in storytelling. But Private Practice consistently prioritized the vulnerable side of things over the dramatization, which set it apart. It was still chock-full of drama (because this is still a Shonda Rhimes show), but compared to Grey’s Anatomy, it is a lot more toned down. Both Grey’s and Private Practice make for mesmerizing television, but Private Practice consistently proved its prowess at telling raw, emotional stories and did so better than Grey’s Anatomy.