Memo to Addison from "Grey's Anatomy": Don't go L.A.

Hey Addison, you're better off staying put at Seattle Grace.

We've got an ocean (hours away). We've got the beach (hugging a lake). But most of all, you've already got a group of doctors who are whiny and insecure, making you shine like the strong, likable woman with whom we first fell in love. (Adultress be damned.)

What's waiting for you in Santa Monica? A crying therapist (Amy Brenneman). A pathetic pediatrician (Paul Adelstein). Even that receptionist/surfer dude (Chris Lowell), nevermind those washboard abs, really isn't all that cute.

After being snubbed by McSteamy and by Alex — McDummy? — Addison took a leave from Seattle Grace and went to Santa Monica on last week's "special" two-hour "Grey's Anatomy." The series, you might have heard, plans a spinoff show orbiting around Addison (Kate Walsh) in sunny Southern Cal. But what viewers were treated to last week was a cast of characters as uninspired as drip coffee. In a plastic cup.

There was the aforementioned heartbroken therapist who (predictably) runs into her ex at the grocery store with his new, nubile bride. (Any woman knows you'll run into your ex at the grocery store. So if you're going to run around in sweats, without any makeup, at least wear a baseball cap so you sort of look pulled together.)

There was Tim Daly playing a naturopath. OK: Daly's hot and knows how to stick acupuncture needles in all the right places, like into Addison's face, so she can "let go." But in a moment of dialogue between the two: Walsh's Kate, finding out she's infertile, breaks down in a stairwell and talks about being "barren." And what does doc Daly do? Tells her he's going to kiss her. "With tongue."

Taye Diggs plays some sort of doc/guru who, for reasons he still doesn't know why, walked out on his fertility-expert wife Naomi (Merrin Dungey). She, in fact, was the best thing on the special, the only one not dripping with desperation (except for that scene when she, Addison and the therapist ogle receptionist/surfer dude). Lame.

But the rest of it, the rest of what took place in California, was as hokey as a talking elevator (which Addison encountered and somehow, all that California sun must have zonked out her brain cells because it took two hours before — surprise! — she learned it was actually a security guard's voice saying "Hi" and "Goodbye").

Last week's episode also tracked the interns back in Seattle — Cristina planning her wedding; Meredith's stepmom dying; George and Izzie making out in an elevator — and all of that was fine enough.

If Addison hadn't gotten caught delivering a baby in an emergency surgery — thwarting her desires to just lounge on the beach — which dragged the episode into two hours (one hour too long), she would have been better off jumping into that little red convertible of hers and hightailing it back to the airport.

Back to the Northwest and up to the Methow for some R&R.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com