Private Practice October 17, 2007 |
|
In July 2021, YouTube set all unlisted videos uploaded before 2017 to private (unless the channel owner had opted out). In the weeks leading up to this change, Archive Team archived many pre-2017 unlisted YouTube videos. If this video was uploaded before 2017 and has gone private, there is a chance that a 360p archived version can be viewed on archive.org via the site's Wayback Machine as follows: 1. Enter the YouTube URL in the Wayback Machine form or click on the following link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210000000000*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lrhSEJqwnE 2. Right-click on a blue entry in July in the calendar. 3. Click 'Copy link address'. 4. Paste the copied link address into your web browser's address bar and press enter.
Description: In the October 17 episode, Andrea Newman's "In Which Addison Has a Very Casual Get Together" (11.8 million viewers), it's back to mockery of "midwif" school and of Dell's role as office naa¯f. One plotline has Addison miffed because none of her clinic colleagues has RSVP'd to her about a party she is holding for them that night. When Dell eagerly notes that he has in fact accepted, Addison reacts with a look that clearly says she still considers that no one has responded. Dell is younger than the other characters, and we suppose Addison is entitled to consider him a "boy." But this kind of scene, with nothing to balance it, reinforces the sense that nurses are either clueless kids or old crones. This show is actually obsessed with humiliating Dell for his youth--bizarre for a show whose main appeal is surely to those with, shall we say, lots of living left to do. No nurse on this show is likely to be portrayed as sexy, smart, and expert like the show's seven physician characters (or "Grey's Anatomy"'s ten, or "House"'s six to nine). The best nurses can hope for now, apparently, is to be the lightweight eighth character on an eight-character show. In an early scene, Dell pins up photos on what he reverently tells Addison is Naomi's "wall of miracles." It will later turn out that Dell is in love with Naomi, but this still presents a midwifery student as worshipping the work of a fertility specialist to an extent that seems unlikely in reality. In another scene, Dell makes another pathetic effort to involve himself in Addison's work on "lady problems." This starts when Addison intrudes on Dell's "domain," which appears to be the office health records; obviously he has no real health care domain. Addison's looking for her own records as a patient of Naomi's. It later turns out that Naomi has misled Addison into thinking she has no eggs, when she actually has two. When Addison returns the file to Dell as he sits at the reception desk, he--knowing only that she must have some fertility issues--offers to help: Dell: Did I mention I'm a total whiz at the female anatomy? I, I, I am acing my midwifery classes. I got it all (pointing at his head) up here. Addison (smiling indulgently and moving away): Well, yeah, keep it up there. Dell (loudly trying to show his expertise, audible to patients): Vulva! Labia majus! Sam (quietly, as he arrives at the desk): If that's flirting, you need new skills. Could you run these labs for me please? In other words, back to your real work, Gilligan. Of course, all the characters on this show act like idiots at times, generally because of love. But this scene isn't just jokily suggesting that Dell is a foolish boy who calls out the names of female body parts in a waiting area. It binds that idea with his status as a midwifery student, in Dell's absurdly reductive account of what he's learning--as if midwifery went no deeper than learning the names of relevant parts of the female anatomy. (Few will know, but Dell shouts "labia majus"--"labia" being plural and "majus" being singular. He means either "labia majora" or "labium majus." Could this be an inside joke by the Latin scholars at "Private Practice," to show elite viewers how clueless Dell really is?) Even when the show pokes fun at Sam's holistic "mind-body" healing schtick, or Pete's Eastern remedies, it makes very clear that those physicians also have a wealth of life-saving traditional medical expertise. They may be fools in love, but not in work. This is not the case with Dell. Later, Dell approaches Addison and tells her that he has "checked on" a Jane Doe patient who has arrived at the clinic several months pregnant. Addison: What are you doing checking on my patient? This is not midwif school. Dell: She's having contractions. OK, so Dell has noticed an important development, and Addison goes to check it out. But any lay person might have noted the contractions. It's yet another example of Addison's explicit, unrebutted mockery of midwifery that many viewers are likely to retain. And the idea that Dell must rely on ad hoc chances to help out on Addison's patients in order to complete his midwifery training is inherently degrading. Is that what Addison did in med. school--got her clinical training in spare moments at her receptionist job? 
|
