Grey's Anatomy

This is my commentary on Seasons 1, 2 and 3.  I have written a second lens on Season 4 which you can view by clicking here: KeepBreathing

In my opinion this is perhaps the greatest and most poignant hospital drama in television history. The writers of this show have weaved together an intricate spider web of relationships, emotional attachments, story lines, subplots, intrigue, and catharsis. I applaud these writers whole-heartedly, their super-drama works on so many levels. I have directed, produced and acted on stage including a little camera work, so I am in tune with the industry and not just a fan. I am highly judgmental of television content, this show has my Emmy.

I am 41 years old. I have had plenty of favorite TV shows in my life. I've mostly been a fan of situation comedy, I loved watching the careers of television comedians rise over the years...Tom Hanks and Robin Williams being on the top of the list. Who knew when Tom Hanks wore that hideous dress, stumbled in high heels and smeared on bright ruby red lipstick back in the early 80's that he would be making such movies as "Castaway" and "Philadelphia Story" today? And what about John Travolta...the king of comeback? After "Saturday Night Fever" he completely disappeared, and popped back up in the mid 80's making incredible films. Anyway, I digress. My point is that I have never invested much of my television viewing on dramas in general. "Thirty Something" was interesting for about a second, and "ER" had a good season or two...but I never felt compelled to watch every week, I never emotionally attached myself to characters, I never sat weeping openly for hours after a show had ended, until Grey's.

About 2 years ago I was flipping through channels as my (ex) husband was sleeping on the couch, and stopped at ABC to watch a funny little hospital show. I didn't know the name of it, and I'm not sure what made me stop flipping the flipper, maybe it was Sandra Oh playing Christina because I just saw her in the movie "Sideways" and loved her. Anyway, I stopped and watched. I remember the eye rolls I gave..."oh brother! This show is ridiculous!" I was laughing because I thought it was a comedy! Everyone was sleeping with everyone, kissing in the broom closet and complaining that they had given one another syphilis. (Who gets syphilis anymore!) I was cracking up.

I told my mate he had to watch this show when the next week rolled around. He humored me, but he was not impressed, and for good reason. The show was a little different the second week, and the third week, and the fourth. Characters were developing and relationships becoming richer and more complicated. Meredith was a mess...why was she sleeping with inappropriate men when Derek was obviously perfect for her? Christina was torn, she loved her life as a single slob focusing on her career, but she was falling in love with squeaky-clean Burke who was pressuring her to live with him. George obviously loved Meredith, but he was so shy and awkward, he had no self esteem at all, and there was NO WAY she would fall for him when she had McDreamy...McDreamy!!!!!! OMG, it was hilarious when they came up with this nickname for Derek...I do not usually fawn over super hot men, but if anyone is has earned the title McDreamy it's Patrick Dempsey.

It took some time, too, but week after week I became more and more intrigued with Izzy Stevens. She started off playing around with Karev, and she pursued him even when he was cold to her and couldn't get it up. I was screaming at the television..."HE'S AN ASSHOLE!!!" but she just wouldn't listen. Katherine Heigl is another "pretty person" that I normally dismiss because beautiful women usually get cast because they are beautiful...Katherine Heigl was cast in this show, because SHE CAN ACT. I am entranced with her darting brown eyes and perfect teeth and infectious smile...but when this girl cries I have to cry with her. She literally sucks me in, and I feel everything she is feeling. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? I come from a background of being on stage, I know that feeling of being so enveloped in your character and the emotional draw you get from the audience that is only a few feet away...but this woman...WOW! She can stir such emotion in front of a camera that I would never be able to do...her audience is months away, people she will never meet, people she will never know she touched, and yet she is tender, delicate, moved, poised and REAL. I love her character's background, she was pregnant at 16, gave her baby away for adoption, had a super model career that paid for her medical schooling and then became an amazing doctor who falls in love with her patients and constantly puts her career on the line in order to heal them. Which is the perfect transition to...

Denny Duquette. Why in the HECK did they kill this character off? To springboard Izzy to a new level on the show, that's why. This actor made a great sacrifice to play this character for half a season, have a wonderfully dramatic death scene (actually is was quite understated, but well done) and then walk away from the show to watch Katherine Heigl explode into the most heart-broken woman in television history. I can't tell you...I CAN'T TELL YOU...how hard I bawled when Izzy put on that pink prom dress, swirled her hair up to look like a delicious wedding cake decoration and stepped into the elevator with a perfect princess smile to go see the man (she had just helped heal and) who she was going to marry. As he lay dead in his hospital bed WOW! I can't even re-live it, it is so painful. Then to top it off, she lays in the deathbed with him, curled up (almost) in the fetal position

wishing that she were dead too, like Juliet when she awoke and found Romeo stabbed. When Izzy finally cut loose and started crying, I was right behind her...I think I wailed...I know I sobbed and sobbed...embarrassingly for weeks afterward. I honestly did not know if I would be able to watch the show again in the fall, my summer was ruined.

OK, so the reason that this show speaks to me on such a personal level, is that about 10 years ago I spent a lot of time in hospitals. My husband was very sick for many years, and I saw him through chemotherapy, radiation, staff infections, chronic pain, surgeries and years of PT and recovery. Eventually toward the end of his 5th year of illness he caught a bug, his immune system could not fight it, he became septic and died. The day & night of his death were the most excruciating hours of my life. No one can explain the guilt, anger, horror and rage I felt when he passed. I was able to cry...thank God, my mother held me and listened to me rant for two days. After that, I swept the rest of the memories and emotion under the rug. I thought I had moved on, until Grey's came along. When I witness those scenes in the hospital, especially when Denny died and when they unplugged George's Dad from life support...those were the episodes that really squeezed the rest of the tears from my soul.

All during the summer after Denny's death, I wondered how they would write Izzy's grief/recovery scenes, I wondered how she would return to work...Season 3 did not disappoint me. They could not have illustrated a better symbolic grieving scene for her. There she lay on the bathroom floor, still in her pink prom dress and hair swirled perfectly...a dead stare, unblinking, no tears, no "emotion"...she wanted to be dead too. She could not see her future without Denny, she could not fathom the horror of what she had sacrificed for Denny's recovery and yet failed. Did she kill him? Was it her fault? Would she ever be able to face another patient? It's not even that she was THINKING these questions specifically, but her soul was full of the question marks. What had she done?

I love when the writer's come up with monologue scenes for each character. When the Chief was grilling the interns for answers about cutting Denny's L-Vad wire...that was a masterpiece of writing. Then they follow through with the monologues of each character with Izzy on the bathroom floor. Izzy thinks no one can help her, she thinks there are no words that can reach her...but eventually Meredith touches her in a way that she is able to face the doorknob and open the bathroom door. LOVE the symbolism!

The genius writing (and acting) continues. Izzy bakes...and bakes...and bakes...then she bakes some more. Izzy always bakes, and do you know why? She is constantly healing. There is something inside of Izzy that is profoundly sad, but she WANTS to be happy. (Unlike Meredith who sort of likes being tragic in a dark and twisty way). So Izzy bakes. Baking and gardening and painting and cleaning are all gestures of healing. Making something new, making it clean, making it comforting...very symbolic. Since I brought it up, this is a distinct character difference between Izzy and Meredith. Izzy makes positive choices to heal, Meredith makes destructive choices...like drowning herself. (OK, later, I know, I know!)

When Izzy is invited back to the hospital to talk to the chief...they wrote the whole episode with Izzy standing outside the building. She was frozen once again. Asking herself, "how can I move forward?". Everyone comes out to talk to her, one by one...but she shoo's them all away. She says, "I'm fine" over and over. She's not fine. During this episode, Karev meets a little girl who thinks she is a "Super Hero" and she feels no pain...and since she cannot feel, she does not know she is bleeding internally. Karev ends the episode by approaching Izzy outside the building. She tells him to go away, which of course he does...but before he walks away, he asks her if it hurts. She says it hurts all over. Karev turns and tells her "maybe it hurts for a reason." Karev evolves.

The character of Karev is another reason I am glued to this program. At first he seemed very surface, a cheesecake character, the guy you loved to hate. As time and episodes went on, I realized what the writers were doing, its almost subliminal...but Karev wants to be a decent guy. There is this little speck inside that wants to be human, and that little speck gets a little bigger and a little bigger each week. He will probably always be an egomaniac, and that's fine because he seasons the show. I don't think any of us would watch a show about bunnies and cherubs on clouds...there needs to be that dark and twisty thing, Karev adds to that. Karev was so cruel to Izzy from day one, she was so sweet and he was so awful. But Karev NEEDS Izzy, she makes him think, she makes him do his job a little better...oh God I'm going to say it...she makes him a better man. When he scoops her off of Denny's death bed you see it, he loves her unconditionally. Karev loves Izzy unconditionally...is that RIGHT? Wow, that almost makes him a saint! Oh, and what about Addison? And Eva? Karev won't say it outloud, but he sees Addison's pain, he sees that she was duped by McSteamy and he feels for her. OK, yes they have sex in a closet, but his feelings for her are not superficial, they are more sympathetic and empathetic. He breaks it off with Addison and uses his "ego-man" to make it seem he never had feelings, but she sees right through him...Addison knows he's human, she tells him to go to Eva.

Who is Eva? How did this happen? In the ferryboat accident, Karev found a woman who was crushed by debris, she was pregnant...he walked away and left her for dead. His experience in Peds (pediatrics) and OB/GYN told his conscience to look back at the presumably "dead" pregnant woman. Her hand was moving! He desperately pulled the mountains of debris off of her and got her to the hospital. Her head was smashed in and her face destroyed, but the baby was still alive...Karev was a hero. When the Jane Doe opened her eyes she saw Karev and she clung to him. Throughout the next four or five episodes, Karev helps this Jane Doe re-gain her identity. He helps her pick "a face" and attach a name to go with it...Jane Doe had her plastic surgery (who paid for all of this?) and became "Eva". I will let this subject dangle until season 4 gets rolling, not exactly sure what will happen between Eva and Karev...perhaps she will be another "Denny Duquette" and leave the show for Alex to springboard into Izzy-dom.

Meredith, Meredith, Meredith...why, why, why... I have a hard time writing about this character because a part of me feels she is so wishy washy and dishwater that I don't want to care what happens to her. The real truth is, I identify with her more than I care to admit. I have spent most of my life in the "dark and twisty" place. Recently I have become more "bright and shiny", but there is a fear deep inside the darkness could come back. Meredith wades in darkness, she sees the light but she resists it. The more she resists, the worse it gets. Emotionally and spiritually it gets harder and harder for Meredith to battle her demons, she is weary...she gets tired of wading and lets the water consume her. At the ferry boat scene, she falls into the water and allows herself to drown. This was one of the most beautifully orchestrated scenes I have ever seen. I had a tremendous respect for Ellen Pompeo after this episode. She popped up out of the water, got her bearings, paddled to keep herself afloat and then you saw it...her face...she recognized her window of opportunity to disappear. She stopped paddling and sunk into the ocean.

The brilliant orchestration doesn't stop there. The writers of Grey's love to paint the picture of the knight in shining armor scooping up the damsel in distress and sweeping her away to...what? Well, let's see...Derek pulls Meredith out of the water, and works his damnest to resuscitate her. He is unsuccessful...the entire hospital staff works and works on Meredith Grey while she spends time in the afterlife with Denny. I liked this quite a bit, Meredith learned a lot in the afterlife. She was her same stupid self for awhile...wallowing in denial...but Denny ultimately brings her around. She finally admits, "I have intimacy issues and that seems really stupid now"...DUH! That's what I've been trying to tell her all along! Anyway, I digress...we were talking about Derek. I have total respect for Patrick Dempsey, he played the long-suffering boyfriend flawlessly. Sitting in the hall...wasted...completely devoid of hope...when you looked into his eyes you saw the deep well of despair.

What about Cristina? I have hardly mentioned her at all. Well, I love Sandra Oh...I just love her. As I mentioned earlier I saw her in the movie "Sideways" and that's what made me start watching Grey's. She adds so many elements, and (like Karev) the show needs her for diversity. She's quirky and witty...Meredith tries to match her wittiness, but in my book Cristina wins. They are a good couple as best friends go. I never bought into the Yang/Burke relationship. But that's OK. We have all had stupid relationships that people did not understand, and I think that's why they wrote this one in. Mer/Der compliment each other, but Yang/Burke? Nah. They are both too into themselves, and even though Burke said some nice things about their relationship (like the scene where he cites his wedding vows in surgery as a rehearsal) I didn't go for it one bit. I knew the wedding would never transpire. Ironically I also knew Burke would be the one to walk away. Cristina had the best line when she realized he was gone..."I'm FREE damn it!" I have actually said this myself two or three times in life.

My nephew made a great observation. He noticed that Meredith opened Season Three by helping Izzy out of her Prom dress, and ended Season Three by cutting Yang out of her wedding dress. WOW. This show is more than writing and acting...the visual symbolism is gripping. GRIPPING.

I'm also sorry to say, I don't buy the George/Cally thang. She is a hot tamale and I love her contribution to the show, they needed her. But for George? Nah. I still see her in my mind's eye hooking up with McSteamy. My prediction is that she and George will split, she will turn to Mr. Hot Pants and George will end up in a stormy relationship with Izzy. He's a little cruel to her, but lately she has been feeding it right back to him. Good for her. Izzy and George need to get their shhh--stuff together and figure it out.

For commentary on Season 4 Click Here.