Caterina Scorsone, who resurrected her Private Practice role of Amelia Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy at the end of last season, will be joining ABC’s venerable medical soap as a full-fledged series regular in Season 11, TVLine has learned.
Source:
More at TVLine
I'm disappointed. As much as I love her (she's my favourite Private Practice character, by a long way), she had her happy ending with James, and now Shonda's going to screw that over and screw over canon to bring her over.
ReplyDeleteThe 'bloated cast' complaint has almost always been much ado about nothing. Most of the ancillary regulars on this show were just there to bounce lines off of the other regulars and rarely took screen time away from the core characters since the newbies hardly ever got their own significant storylines, with a few notable exceptions.
ReplyDeleteThere are only 4 more regulars now than there were in season one. The fewest amount of regulars this show has had was 9 and the most was 15. With this addition, the cast is back down to 13 which is 1 cast member fewer than they had four seasons ago.
But this cast bloat has been a huge problem for me as a viewer for a long time. The show worked best with a singular group of characters to follow. And I totally disagree about newer regulars being there to bounce off our originals - Alex has been underused for years, same with Meredith. April, Jackson, Owen, and the interns took up a HUGE chunk of our screen time last year. Of course fresh blood is needed to keep a show, especially this far in, going. But Grey's tends to add characters way too fast and do a terrible job developing them or making them interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe addition of Meredith's second half sister is another example of this. I'm SO glad she hasn't - yet - been announced as a regular. I get that lots of fans enjoy lots of different characters, but when there are 6 different storylines going on with NO connection to one another other than taking place in the same hospital, the show just feels thrown together and soapy.
Very very happy, loved private practice and she was the only character that made absokute sense to move to greys.
ReplyDeleteWas waiting for that to be announced seemed like the likely move. Maybe Amelia and Owen will get together or something
ReplyDelete- Grey's hasn't had fewer than 11 regulars on the show since season 2. They now have 13.
ReplyDelete- Justin Chambers has seemingly had his screen time increase significantly in reason seasons, especially since they introduced Jo.
- April, Jackson, and Owen aren't new characters. They've been around for 40% and 50% of the show's existence. At this point they're a collective veteran presence on the show. The only crime they seem to have committed here is not being founding characters of the show.
"But Grey's tends to add characters way too fast and do a terrible job developing them or making them interesting." - This I agree with to a point. However, if all you're going to do with a character is use them as sounding boards and plot devices for other characters, detailed, well-crafted development isn't really a priority.
Chambers indeed got his story bumped up this past season but it was mostly all garbage - Jo is a great example of a terribly written recent cast addition. She has no personality of her own, she was made to be with Alex, and the actress is so-so at best. The stuff with his dad was good but got shoved aside too quickly. And yes , I consider April and Jackson newer characters because they're example of the way I hate Grey's introducing characters (Owen I maybe shouldn't have put there, because I LOVED his intro and first season, but his character sure has been butchered since). April and Jackson have basically no connections to our original cast, they are mostly totally bland, off in their own stories, and they get more screen-time than Meredith / Derek / Alex / Bailey / Richard etc.
ReplyDeleteArizona, alternatively, was a well-introduced character in my opinion. Rather than just making her for Callie, they introduced her first as a peds surgeon and she's had great moments with Bailey and Alex as well - she FEELS part of the cast. What the hell is purpose of keeping Stephanie around? Who cares what happens to her? At the end of last season they had Amelia in like 3 episodes and didn't even know what to do with her there, how are they going to use her all season organically? The stories are just all over the place, it's nearly impossible to watch an episode of Grey's that feels cohesive anymore unless they leave some regulars out.
It seems to me your real complaint here isn't cast size but that your personal preferences aren't being met and your general dislike of most of Grey's non-core (original) characters.
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong. I don't think any series would work well with this many characters, all it does is leave every single one of them under-developed. The issue is they can't figure out how to balance as many characters as they're throwing at us, and if they did a better job of writing for them, it wouldn't be a problem. I've loved many characters introduced on this - and other - shows in later seasons, but the tendency on Grey's is to have too many characters and stories that are all just retreats of past characters and stories.
ReplyDeleteThere has been plenty of balance on the show, just seemingly not in your favor. You said yourself that characters like April, Jackson, Owen, etc. were getting a lot more screen time. In fact, I'd say that those characters and others like Arizona and Callie were getting amounts of screen time a lot closer to those of Meredith, Derek, Bailey, etc. The more even screen time across the board actually shows a greater balance but I'm guessing that's not to your liking.
ReplyDeleteWhatever you say buddy.
ReplyDeleteThis was a given.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Maggie will be a regular or recurring.
Yes! I'm actually happy with this. Doesn't make me not sad about no Cristina next year, but I've always loved Amelia on PP, so I'm glad to see her back on my screen.
ReplyDeletenot surprised,not excited...
ReplyDeleteDay, made.
ReplyDeleteAwesome news!!! Now bring Kim Raver back, pleeeease!!
ReplyDeleteIt was bound to happen but I'm not sure how to feel about this. Hopefully she'll get a decent storyline.
ReplyDeleteIt was about time!
ReplyDeleteMaybe after a while Shonda will bring James too...
ReplyDeleteagree with your many posts. The ensemble nature of the show (something I've always enjoyed), and the many stories this creates, is perhaps often misunderstood by many viewers who are fans of the more established regulars. There are priority regulars and ancillary regulars. Amelia's introduction into Grey's as a regular is, in my opinion, a good move on Shonda's part as it allows an established and actually well loved character to hit the ground running without too much pre-amble. Her character has an interesting backstory and new potential in this setting. In theory I welcomed the introduction of the interns as much needed foils but something about their development has been flawed. Perhaps too tactical in their execution, not strategic enough.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hope so :)
ReplyDeleteI just hope she does not make Amelia and Owen a thing.
ReplyDeleteYeah that'd be the worst
ReplyDelete