CANCELLED -- Private Practice

The news has come that ABC has decided to cancel Private Practice once Kate Walsh makes her exit from the show. The funny thing is if it had happened last year I would have welcomed the news, but this year the show had improved now that it stopped over-emphasizing the Addison Montgomery character.

Watching Private Practice last year was sheer torture having to endure the weekly Addison prologues and epilogues on her shrink's couch. It also didn't help when Pete had a Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde personality change, supposedly because of his heart attack. The only saving graces on the show was Charlotte and Coop's story and Amelia's heart-wrenching story of having to carry a baby she knew had no hope of survival and even Addison had to force her way into that story and make it all about herself. So if the show had been cancelled last year I would have breathed a sigh of relief. That it was cancelled this year because Kate Walsh is leaving the show saddens me.

I hate to break it to ABC, but Addison Montgomery didn't make the show and she didn't help drive it. It was actually two couples that helped keep this show going and two female characters that out-shined Addison Montgomery. Let's be honest, Addison hasn't really had a really successful or popular romantic pairing on this show.

The first couple was Pete and Violet. The whole trauma of a patient cutting Pete and Violet's child out of a pregnant Violet and them having to deal with the trauma afterwards kept this show going for quite some time. Unfortunately, Shonda Rimes ended up butchering Pete's character to such a degree last season and she finished it up by having him die of a heart attack while out jogging, this season. Now Violet has been intriguing watching her grieve for her husband and try to deal with being a single mother.

And after Pete and Violet's drama was pretty much resolved and they married, you had Coop and Charlotte and them having to deal with the trauma of getting through Charlotte's brutal rape. That was followed by the drama with Coop's dying baby mama. And this season, Charlotte who wants no kids, has learned she's having triplets and she's having to find some way to come to terms with that.

Amelia's harrowing story of becoming a drug addict and then having to overcome her addiction and the whole harrowing tale of discovering her baby had no brain and having to give birth to it, knowing it had no chance of life, also made her another must-see character that easily outshone that over-exposed Addison.

All these character could have kept the show going when Addison was long gone. The show might even have risen to better heights once Addison was gone. In a lot of ways she sometimes dragged it down.

The sad thing is there were a lot of times I felt that Private Practice was a better written and acted show than Grey's Anatomy. It didn't have the Freak Of The Week medical cases that Rimes likes to fill Grey's Anatomy with that looks like the story came off the pages of a tabloid. Like, last week's, man with giant family jewels.

Anyway, when Private Practice takes it's final bow, I'll miss it. The show had turned itself around this season. It's a shame that ABC pulled the plug on it thinking without Addison Montgomery on the show, the show had nothing to offer.

R.I.P. Private Practice. You will be missed.