Last week saw Nicholas Brendon, my beloved Xander, brutally raping Charlotte (a character that I'd finally started liking). While I was still traumatized from that, I totally didn't expect that this week's episode would hit from all sides with the depressing. I might need a Paxil after watching it.

Of course there was Charlotte, and it was hard to watch her walk around all bruised and battered with her broken arm and her unhealed back injury (which she changed the bandages on herself so a man wouldn't touch her). And seeing her flashback to the night of the rape (which she is in denial about), and try and cope with her pain without the help of drugs because she's in NA. Because, of course, this horrible rape wasn't bad enough, she also can't take drugs or she might have a relapse and has to turn to McDreamy's sister for help, of all people.

But what got me was the fact that Violet had also been raped. It was in college, and we didn't have to see it, but shit, could Violet's life suck more? This is a woman who we somewhat recently saw beaten down so that Meghan from Felicity could literally cut a baby from her stomach and then leave her to die. To watch her talk about how a stranger came through an open window on a warm summer night was particularly hard. Could it not have happened to someone else? Let's just keep piling on the horrors with Violet, OK? Are we going to find out that she was sexually abused as a child at some point, so she can better relate to one of Cooper's patients? She can be an effective therapist without having had to experience everything firsthand. OK, show?

But that wasn't it, there were also the pick-me-up patients of the week to deal with. The first was a former ballerina who has a super-nice husband who doesn't even mind that she beats him. In fact, he's stuck with her through several illnesses, including breast cancer, which caused her to have a mastectomy. Addison, when she's not busy trying to expose Charlotte's rape to the world, figures out that the cancer is back and is causing testosterone-infused rages. But the cancer is somewhere mysterious, so they have to do exploratory surgery to find it. I thought Addison was a baby surgeon, why is she operating on this grown woman? Are there no oncologists at this hospital? And who does she think she is with the exploratory surgery? House? Anyway, after the surgery, she breaks the news that the woman doesn't have much time to live, and Sheldon (who has been campaigning to the husband to leave this abusive relationship) worries that the husband is going to keep getting kicked over and over again, so they send her to hospice to basically die alone. Cheerful, right?

And if that wasn't enough, Cooper and Pete's patient is a young girl whose cancer has also returned. But her father refuses chemo and has a shaman come to his house to work some magic on the front lawn with all the neighbors watching. Fine, but the girl almost dies and she has to be rushed to the hospital, where Cooper gets all ethical and calls in a judge to force chemo on the girl. Turns out, the girl doesn't want the chemo because she's worried that her father and siblings (the mother died of an aneurysm) will end up poverty-stricken, because her last two rounds of treatments forced them to move into a trailer park and for her father to skip meals to make ends meet. God, really? In the end we see her getting the chemo, with the shaman as well, but it's unclear who is fronting this bill. Is the father destitute because Cooper wouldn't back down?

I kind of feel like the husband of the ballerina here, like for some delusional reason that I can't really explain, I am sticking with this show, but every once and a while it just goes into a rage, and I feel like I've gone through the ringer. It wasn't even that I was a crying mess after this episode -- honestly, I think I was just shell-shocked -- it was more that maybe the show could do with a little balance. Maybe have, like, a cute miracle baby being delivered on the weeks that they do these intense storylines? You know, for those of us who are still traumatized by the death of Dell or seeing these rich, asshole doctors basically hang his child out to dry? And to make matters worse, Addison wasn't even dressed in some cute fancy outfit I could covet. She was wearing a really unflattering tan blouse, when she wasn't turning down sex with Sam. It's all kinds of crazy. Could this show have a week where they just all hang out and drink together for a minute? Just like one week? And also, where the hell is Naomi? I know, they've sent her off to work on her dead boyfriend's charity, but I actually sort of miss her. Could she not call... or write?