‘Private Practice’ review: New faces and missing persons

In many ways you could consider Tuesday night’s new episode of “Private Practice” a landmark one. Why? It was the first hour for the show since the news first broke that ABC was ending it after sixth seasons, and it was also one of the few where we really saw the writers move on past the fact that Pete was dead.

With that being said, though, they did not decide to stay away from tragedy altogether. Easily the most emotional plot here for us came in the form of a missing child named Sarah, and what was the most surprising part of it was that Shonda Rhimes decided not to wrap up the story by the time the episode was over. Instead, was have someone who is really just floating around in the space of the show. Hopefully, this will at least be referenced at some point moving forward, but who really knows?

On the relationship standpoint, we had major fight here between Jake and Addison over a patient, and strange as it may seem, this seems like a little more even ground for them to stand on than dealing with something Mark’s death. With the profession that they are in, disagreements are surely inevitable; it’s really how you handle them that matters.

Meanwhile, Addison also got involved with Sam’s new relationship with Stephanie, and we are sure that this is probably going to be a polarizing plot for many. Some people are probably going to accuse the character of being too nosey for dishing about her past with Taye Diggs’ character, but this was really something that Stephanie needed to know. Even if Sam wasn’t thinking of her as the rebound, the fact was that he had proposed to Addison not that long ago, and he was trying to move on before he was really ready to. With that in mind, it’s not a shock to see this end already.

Yes, somewhere in the middle of all this we met a new doctor named James Peterson, but to be honest it’s hard to care given that we only have a few episodes to get to know him before the show ends.

What did you think about how this episode possibly brought us closer to the end of the series?