audra mcdonald

(S01E02) Even if Private Practice had fair ratings for its premiere, the reviews for the first official installment of the Grey's Anatomy spin-off were not stellar. Actually, at the time I write these lines, out of the 733 readers who voted in our "Will Private Practice be part of your weekly watch list?" poll only 146 (19.9%) said they would definitely watch the series while 398 (54.2%) said they would give it a few more weeks but weren't sure about the show yet. The remainder, that's 25.7%, said they would not watch more episodes. I fall in the second category.

So did this week's episode of Practice delivered the goods to have some of the undecided stick with the show?

(S01E01) You think I moved here because you kissed me? - Addison

Technically, Private Practice aired its first episode within the Grey's Anatomy 2-hour long "The Other Side of This Life," which aired last May. After the episode aired, most of the fans were quite vocal about their hate (or disappointment) towards the Addison spin-off. ABC, probably knowing that part of the pilot's failure was due to the fact it aired within a Grey's episode and that the spin-off could do better on its own, decided to pick up the series and ordered 13 episodes.

Now that the first official episode of the series aired, we can properly review, analyze, and critique Private Practice and decide if we hate it or not.

Scott Patterson, who played Luke Danes on Gilmore Girls, will star in the CW's Aliens in America, a new comedy that airs Mondays this fall.

Aliens in America focuses on the friendship between two sixteen year olds: an American high school, Justin Tolchuk (Dan Byrd) and his friend, a Muslim exchange student named Raja Musharaff (Adhir Kalyan). Patterson will play Gary, Justin's father. He's taking over the role from Patrick Breen, who portrayed the father in the pilot episode.

Here's one of the big problems with airing your "pilot" episode as part of the run of the series from which it spins off: if you decide to make any cast changes, those changes will be pretty obvious.

Case in point: The millions of people who watched the Private Practice spin-off episode of Grey's Anatomy saw Merrin Dungey playing Dr. Naomi Bennett, the friend and fertility expert that Addison Montgomery visited in L.A. because she was looking to have a baby. However, come fall, Dr. Bennett will be played by noted Broadway actress Audra McDonald (pictured), according to the Show Tracker blog on the LA Times' web site. There was no word on why the role was recast.