Reception
Discussing the first episode of the show following the pilot, Variety's Cynthia Littleton observed: "I can definitely see why creator/exec producer Shonda Rhimes made the call to recast Audra McDonald in the key role of Naomi Bennett". Fellow Variety critic Brian Lowry was more negative in his consideration of the episode, noting that Naomi and Sam's "'No, you left me first' interaction already feels tedious." Jon Caramanica of the Los Angeles Times has criticized McDonald's performance as Naomi in the show's first season, writing that: "she was rigorously firm, almost dispassionate. As people bed-hopped and were emotionally flimsy around her, she remained stern at the center McDonald is a strong, vivid actress, but such gravity felt at odds with the breezy tone of Private Practice." Caramancia opined that "the tougher Naomi became, the lighter Addison had to be to keep the show's balance", and that as a result the series "regularly felt unmoored and became something of a critical punching bag". He was much more positive regarding her performance in the second season premiere episode "A Family Thing", observing: "Toward the end of the episode, there is a brief scene in which she, beleaguered and on her last leg, utterly melts into Sam. In those 15 seconds, McDonald's genius as an actress is clear, communicating with just a few facial movements and shading of the eyes a world of hurt and letdown. And later in the episode, when she thinks things are falling back into place, her soft, knowing, warm smile is one of the show's greatest victories, even though it comes just before everything goes wrong once again."
Read more about this topic: Naomi Bennett
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)