Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

From Shonda Rhimes (FINALLY)…

So Denny Duquette died at 7:42 Monday evening.

Actually, he died once on the East coast and once again on the West coast and I’m pretty sure he’s going to die many more times on many more continents pretty damned soon.

I cried. When Denny died, I cried. I cried when I wrote the script page where Denny dies. I cried when we had the read through and the cast found out that Denny dies. I cried when Mark Tinker filmed Denny dying. I cried when Ed Ornelas edited Denny’s death. I cried watching them mix the song playing during Denny’s death. I’m a freaking crybaby when it comes to Denny.

I choose to blame editor Ed Ornelas for Denny’s death. Like I had nothing to do with it. Like I was an innocent bystander in the whole thing. Like it wasn’t me wrote it. I’d sit behind him in the editing room and sob into a tissue while saying kindly, supportive things to the back of Ed’s head. Things like “Denny Murderer! Dog Killer!!! DENNY-MURDERING-DOG-KILLER!!!”

I didn’t kill Denny. Ed did.

Right.

Look, I honestly have nothing to say for myself. No words in my own defense. Except I told you guys that the characters have to do what the characters have to do. I mean, I love Denny. Really love him. He was my “you jump, I jump” guy. He was my imaginary future husband. He was the guy I was dating in my head. HE WAS ALL I HAD. And now he’s dead. God, I feel so Izzie in this moment.

But the point is, Denny was always going to die. His character was created to die. I knew it. Jeffrey Dean Morgan knew it. And as much as I wanted Denny NOT to die when the time came, as much Jeffrey Dean Morgan wanted to NOT die when the time came, as much as Channing Dungey (our super cool studio executive ) begged me to not to hurt her Denny…

…it was his time. He had a stroke. He died. I had nothing to do with it. It was his time.

People die. Suddenly. Without warning. When you least expect it. People die. And it’s horrible and painful and utterly shocking but…it happens. And I wanted to present that on the show.

The good thing is – and you’re all yelling “GOOD THING? GOOD THING?!!!” – but, yes, there is a good thing in all of this. And that good thing is what Camille says to Richard. “I’ve been loved. I’ve been loved. That’s something everyone should feel once in their life.” Denny has been loved. And he dies knowing he was loved. And knowing that he loved back.

I named this episode “Losing My Religion” because, to me, that is what happens to each intern in this episode. Each intern lets go of the things they’ve held onto all season. George lets go of loving Meredith. Cristina lets go of her well-checked emotions. Izzie is forced to let go of her idealism. And that leads to her letting go of medicine. Alex lets go of his rage against Izzie. And Meredith…well, Meredith just lets go.

I don’t want to talk too much about the Mer/Der of it all because we are clearly hanging on a cliff here and anything I say may tell you what’s on the other side. And you know I hate spoilers. But I do feel like we’ve tried to make their relationship complex. Derek’s flawed and sometime you hate him. Meredith’s flawed and sometimes you hate her. And you can’t help but root for Addison to be happy. And you like Finn cause he births ponies and he has plans. And clearly poor Doc was a metaphor for the Mer/Der relationship and when Doc’s put down, it feels like a horrible, painful but necessary ending. But still…when Derek grabs Meredith and kisses her…it’s such a relief. You want them to figure this thing out.

I do want to talk about the costumes (done beautifully by Mimi the costume goddess). Everyone dresses up for the prom. But then we lose Denny. And here’s something you maybe don’t notice until all our interns are gathered in the room with Izzie who lies on the bed with Denny’s body: the prom clothes are actually mourning clothes. Funeral clothes. Suddenly, you see that Meredith and George and Cristina and Callie and Alex are all dressed, not for a prom, but for a funeral. Everyone in dark colors, everyone dressed somberly. As if they were in mourning. Only Izzie is in happy pink. Only Izzie looks like she didn’t know this was coming. In the last scene, Mark Tinker shot this gorgeous shot of Izzie walking down the stairs, Alex and George behind her. I love that shot. Izzie has this fallen queen thing going on that I just adore.

Speaking of the prom…dudes, I so wanted this prom. I’ve wanted this prom since the beginning of the season. We’d been planning for it and obsessing about it. Because, first of all, I like seeing men in suits. Second, these interns and their lives remind me so much of high school in all the best ways. I hope you’ve noticed that. I hope you got the Breakfast Club of it all when they give their speeches to the Chief. Cause I’m an 80’s girl and I needed my prom.

Burktina: this episode is one of my favorites for both Burke and Cristina. If you look at where they began at the beginning of Season Two and how far they’ve come…. You just hate Cristina. You hate her when she walks away from Burke after seeing that he know has a hand tremor. And then you see her give that speech to the Chief (which by the way, Sandra Oh did brilliantly and perfectly EVERY SINGLE TAKE) and you see the struggle. Her struggle to suppress all of her humanity in pursuit of perfection. And in my mind, what we realize is that she is not cold. She is terrified. Scared that if she lets her emotions out, they will overtake her and she will be hurt. And you can’t hate her. Because it’s so incredibly human and understandable. There’s that moment when Burke tells Cristina that he won’t bear a grudge and it’s so sad because he means it. He doesn’t believe she has it in her to stay by his side. And then Denny dies and Cristina watches Izzie grieving and realizes that she has no other option but to go to Burke and cover his hand with her own. Because you can lose someone if you’re not careful.

There’s more to say but I know y’all are itching for me to post this blog. So I’ll do another one later in the week. Because we still have to talk about the Chief and about Burke’s tremors and George and Callie’s thing and so much more…

One last thing: Thank you so much for watching the show. I’ve been in New York for the network upfronts and it’s been amazing to hear from fans how much they enjoy the show. It means a lot to me and all of us who work on Grey’s. You may have heard we are moving to Thursday night. I’m thrilled because Thursday is a big day for TV and I love a challenge and I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed that you’ll follow us to our new night.

From Joan Rater, one of the writers of "Deterioration of the Fight or Flight Response" (hour 1 of the 2 hour finale)

Original Airdate: May 15, 2006 (Note: The second hour of the two hour finale, titled "Losing My Religion," was written by Shonda, and she will be sharing her thoughts on that one herself in a bit...)

I know, I know, I KNOW!!!!!!  Denny's dead and it sucks.  More than sucks.  Blows.  Feels awful and empty and seriously, why couldn't Denny have lived?

Well, if you'd been hanging around the Writer's Room in March you would have heard the writers asking that very question, day after day.  Does Denny really have to die?  There was one particular day when most of the writers had decided that Denny couldn't die.  He had to live. Seriously.  Why not?  And when Shonda came into the Writer's Room and Krista said, "Does Denny have to die?", I think Shonda's head almost exploded because it was about the 12th person that day who had asked the very same question.  And here's the thing.  The person who wanted Denny to live the MOST is Shonda.  We all love Denny because he's so charming and Denny-ish and the actor is even more charming and Jeffrey-ish, but let me tell you there was no one more tortured and torn up about it than Shonda.  So you say to yourself, okay, you're the writers, you could have saved him if you wanted to.  But we couldn't.  Denny had to die. And not for plot reasons or anything like that, it's just ... it's hard to explain.  As bad as it felt, it also felt right.  “Right” is so the wrong word, but it felt inevitable.  But since Denny didn't die until hour two, and Tony and I wrote hour one, I'll leave it to Shonda to talk more about Denny ...

What I really want to talk about is you guys.  The fans.  I mean, we all know it was one hell of an emotional roller coaster, these last three episodes.  And a lot of things are still up in the air … Mer/Der/Finn in particular.  I watched last night with my nieces and nephew who literally were begging me for something, anything about next season.  I so wanted to tell them that no matter what happens with Izzie, or who Meredith picks, it's all going to be alright (I'm a mother, I have 2 kids, so I'm inclined to want to make it all better and for there to be band-aids put on skinned knees and happy endings at the end of stories).  But before I became a mother, I was a single woman living in New York City through most of my twenties.  And I know from experience that before the happy ending there's a lot of bad choices, bad luck, one night stands and tequila.  Not to mention amazing, magical times that make all those bad choices and one night stands worth it.  Your twenties are when you figure out who you are, and what matters to you.  You're forming friendships that will sustain you.  You're making plans.  Looking for your soulmate.  Wondering if there is such a thing as a soulmate. These interns are struggling with all that while learning to be surgeons.  I started this paragraph saying I wanted to talk about you guys, the fans, and I ended up talking about myself (something Tony says I do a lot).  I guess it's because when I read your comments, I can relate.  I might not agree, but I usually get and appreciate how you feel and where you're coming from, even if it's an angry rant about how dare we kill Denny.  Seriously, you guys, we feel it too.  All we're trying to do is do right by these characters, and write stuff we'd want to watch.

So I’ll leave you with what I told my nieces and nephew last night about next season:  It’s gonna be great.  You’ll laugh … and cry … and hate our characters one minute … and love them the next.  And throw things at your TV. 

And we'll keep doing our best to bring you stories about the messiness of being human.

From Mark Wilding, writer of "17 Seconds"

Airdate:  May 14, 2006

Okay.  You obviously saw last night’s episode.  And in a minute or so, I want to talk about it because it looks like Izzie has done a very, very bad thing.  Like a going to hell bad thing.  I want to talk about that bad thing and other bad things that people did in my episode.  I do.  But first…

…There’s a couple things you should know.  First, you should know that I’m okay with the fact this blog will have a very short lifespan.  And I mean short.  Barely 24 hours.  That’s what happens when a two hour finale follows on the heels of your episode.  That finale is tonight.  Not next Sunday night,  TONIGHT.  So cancel your plans to watch “Two and a Half Men.”  Ditch studying for that sociology final.  And forget about going to bed at 10:00 o’clock because you’re tired from staying up late to watch last night’s episode.  Because tonight is when things heat up even more.  I simply set the table for tonight’s feast.  And that feast is going to be… well,  I don’t want to give anything away, so let’s just say it’ll be very, very entertaining.   And Shonda is definitely going to have a few things to say about it in her blog tomorrow.  So really, this is just a pre-blog.  An appetizer you can digest until they bring out the roasted wild boar and thirty pound lobsters and flaming baked Alaskas (or whatever dessert lights on fire).

The second thing you should know is that I have two sisters.  I also have a brother but I’m not talking about him today.  He’s a good guy, he’s just not pertinent to this particular discussion.  Since this particular discussion involves Denny and other things in the show that my brother pretends not to care about.  But mostly it’s about Denny.  One of my sisters lives in Montreal and the other one lives in New York City.  What do they have in common besides the fact they both live back east and they’re both lucky enough to have me as a brother?  Well, they both watch the show and they both LOVE Denny.  They LOVE him.  As does my wife.  Who finally got to visit the set a few weeks ago and, with all the wonderful cast members we have, the one person she REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to meet was Denny, aka Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  She met him and, guess what, he’s also very charming in person.  I mean,  CHARMING.  As in I would understand if my wife left me for him charming.  I wouldn’t like it but I would understand it.  Luckily, that hasn’t happened.  If and when it does, you’ll be the first to know.

Anyway, my New York sister wrote me a letter a couple weeks ago that said if anything bad happened to Denny, she would never watch the show again.  Ever.  So, is what’s happened to him bad?  And more importantly, is Izzie bad for doing it?  Is she tremendously irresponsible?  She cut the LVAD wire for love so does that make her action understandable?  Or just crazy.  I mean,  Denny’s still alive, right?  (Sorry, I can’t even tell you that – tune in tonight!).   And Izzie does have a plan so it’s not like she hasn’t thought this all out.  Or has she?  Is bad, well… relative?  You see, all these questions I just asked -- they’re the things we talk about in the writers’ room.  And we don’t always have the answers.  Because too often those answers aren’t black and white.  They’re grey and they fall into cracks and it’s hard to get a hold of them because they keep just slipping out of reach.  Here’s another one -- if you do a bad thing for a really, really good reason – is it still a bad thing?  Does my sister understand that?  Or has she already stopped watching the show?

As for the other thing that might have caught your attention at the end of the episode – namely Preston Burke lying on the ground with a bullet in him – that was a bad thing.  At least none of our interns did that.  At least, directly.  Indirectly’s another story.  After all, it was Izzie’s misbehavior that led to him rushing back to the hospital.  Of course, he was being bad at the start of the episode -- punishing Cristina for falling asleep during sex by telling her she couldn’t go get the heart.  Still, it’s not like he deserved to get shot.  It’s funny, you write an episode with a theme in mind (in this case, anger management) and after you’ve filmed the thing, you start thinking about other possible themes.  Like, say, “men behaving badly”.  Petey the shooter behaves badly, Neal the bullet ducker behaves badly, Brad the boss behaves badly, Burke behaves badly and Derek is still behaving badly towards Meredith (and Addison for that matter).

As for Mer/Der… that silent scene in the elevator at the end where they have so much pain and they can’t talk to each other – well that scene originally had words.  Many words.  But Patrick Dempsey thought it would play stronger without words and he was right.  The scene started out being about anger – hence the many words -- but if you combine anger with love, you really get pain.  The pain of hating someone while still loving them.  We’re told that to hate someone is bad.  But if you love them at the same time, is it still bad?  I once had a girlfriend who used to throw tantrums in restaurants.  Yes, public tantrums.   Embarrassing, horrible public tantrums directed at me.  It was traumatic and yet it was also a little bit exciting.  The result being I loved her and hated her at the same time.  However, in the end, I just hated her.  I mean, come on, public tantrums?  That’s just bad.  By the way, my wife doesn’t have public tantrums and for that I love her.  Although, I do wish she’d get off this Denny kick. 

Anyway, I can’t talk about Burke or Denny or Meredith and Derek anymore because the more I talk about it, the more I’m tempted to give something away.  Also, these are Shonda’s characters.  “Grey’s Anatomy” is her novel.  We, the other writers, try to get into her head as best we can, but at the end of the day, she’s the one that should have the last word.  And tomorrow, she will.

And that won’t be all bad, will it?

Shonda on "Damage Case"

Original Airdate: May 7, 2006

I gotta be honest.

I have no idea what to say in this here, our blog entry for tonight’s episode “Damage Case.”

No.  Freaking.  Idea.

Why?

Because I’m scared I might spill the beans.  About the finale.  The gi-normous two-night, three hour finale the writers and the cast and the crew have been working their butts off on.  I’m usually good with the secrets.  I didn’t tell you about Meredith and George.  I didn’t let it slip that Dylan was gonna explode.  I kept the food-eating contest to myself.

But I’m a tiny bit tired from making 27 episodes of television.  And my mind is all crazy because fourteen days from now, it has become clear that everyone around me thinks I’m going to take time off.  That I’m going to stop thinking about my friends at Seattle Grace.   That I won’t get in the car,  drive to the studio and obsess about Meredith and George and Izzie and Cristina and Derek and everybody.  That I’m going to…I don’t know…SLEEP.  Or see my actual three-dimensional friends who, while lovable,  get kinda cranky when I write dialogue and ask them to say it out loud.  I’m supposed to go on vacation?  Are you serious?

Anyway, my point is, I’m weak.  I’m a weak pathetic shell of my former self so my super-hero-secret-keeping powers are not working so good.  They are broken.  But I will do my best.  I will do my best to just chat calmly and quietly about “Damage Case” and pretend those other future episodes don’t exist.

This episode was originally borne of an idea one of our writers Mimi Schmir had about this amazing damage control surgery.  I think it was Krista Vernoff who suggested that what would be cool is if our interns are all working on patients from a single family.  Which is how I ended up writing “hillbilly” dialogue.  I love the big-haired Southern girl and her family.  I love the Mama who says “good girl” instead of “vagina” and I love Big Jim who screams “Melly!!  MELLY!!!” in a crazy Deliverance way.  But what I got the most joy from is humanizing them.  What starts out as a funny hillybilly picnic story where you kind of mock this family slowly turns into a story about loss, love and forgiveness.  Mama gives that wonderful speech about how a mother should be in on making decisions for her daughter.  Big Jim offers a moment of grace to the boy who killed his daughter.  And Noah breaks my heart every time when I think of him left with a baby but without the love of his life.  I love this family.  And I love even more how in the midst of all of their tragedy and pain,  we watch  our characters struggle through.

“Yeah, yeah,” you’re thinking, “get to that argument with Meredith and Derek!”

I’m getting there.  But first I have to make a detour.  A detour over to the Land of Callie Peeing.  You know I have to go there.  This may be one of my favorite moments of our show EVER.  It’s right up there with George gets the syph for me.  Maybe not for you.  But for me…Callie walking into that bathroom topless and peeing in front of Meredith and Izzie was SO GREAT.  Because it was SO HORRIBLE.  I love that Mer and Izzie respond with all the trauma of having viewed  a car crash.  And I love even more the very sweet moment at the end where Callie says that she did wash her hands but she did it in the kitchen because those girls were looking at her like…

You know who Callie was in high school, right?  You know she was the outsider, the loner rebel chick who didn’t have many friends and wore weird clothes and was just tortured by the cool kids.  Callie, as played with Sara Ramirez …dudes, Sara won a TONY AWARD for Spamalot – I saw her in the show and she ROCKED and then we met for breakfast and discovered that we were like best friends who’d never ever met and talked for hours and hours and hours and…okay, I digress.  My point is that Sara makes Callie so vulnerable in her kickass toughness.  And when I, in near terror, asked her take off her clothes and do a scene where she pees in front of Meredith and Izzie, she was all, “I’m on it” and threw herself into the scene.  I am frankly hoping that the ABC shopping site tells us where we can buy those panties she was wearing because those were the best panties EVER next to Izzie’s Season One Hello Kitty panties and I have to own some.  I think I would be less angry about going on vacation if I had some cool Callie panties.  I would never pee in front of other people but I would be happy.

Once again, I’m losing the point.  The point…the point…the point is Callie pees and Izzie tortures her a tiny bit about the hand washing and that made me overjoyed because that’s the kind of thing people do.

The other detour I wanna make is over to Denny-ville.  I love Denny.  In a dangerous way.  Denny is very real to me.  He’s no character I made up.  He’s DENNY.  He’s human for me in a way that makes the actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan nervous when I get within fifty feet of him.  See, when Denny gets all depressed about being an invalid, I want to climb in bed with him just like Izzie does.  What’s shocking about Denny’s depression is that we are so not used to seeing him angry.  He’s so sweet.  But being an invalid wears down the spirit – that’s what our doctors tell us, that’s  what we all know from seeing it happen to people we know.  And I wanted us to see a little of that.  I wanted us to see that Denny is starting to despair of ever getting a heart.  That Denny is about to give up.  Which breaks my Denny-loving heart because he’s Denny and I just want to watch him play Scrabble and say things in that drawl  of his. 

Okay, last detour:  Alex saving the baby.  I love that we have a character who can do something wonderful but still be a selfish cranky ass about it.  Alex gets to be complex in ways most characters  don’t because even though he’s got a moral code, his moral code is totally twisted  and dark.  But he’s essentially good – deep down inside.

And now, finally, the Mer/Der of it all.  He’s so angry.  And that anger has been kinda building since all the way back when Meredith told him about George.  And it just gets SO much worse when he sees her at Finn’s and assumes she is sleeping with him.  The man is jealous.  McDreamy is jealous.  Beyond all reason or sanity or any rational thought.  He’s just jealous.  And that fight they have in the stairwell…oh, I was proud of Meredith for standing up for herself.  I was a proud, proud Mama.   But my little heart was also breaking.  Because he’s so angry.  And she’s so angry.  And then in the next episode…

Oh, yeah, right.  No talk about the next episode.  But it’s a big one.  That gets bigger.  And then it gets even bigger.  But I can’t talk about it.

I can talk about how cute and hot Finn is and how much I love it when he says “I never said I wasn’t scary and damaged too.”  Because he is like Meredith.  And that gives her a little bit of hope.  It may give you hope too.  Or it may give you a seizure because you want your Mer and your Der BACK TOGETHER and you want them back together NOW.

I could tell you so many things.  So many.  If I could.  Which I can.  But I won’t.

We’ll talk more later.  After you’ve seen the stuff you haven’t seen yet.  I’ll explain everything.  I promise.

Right now,  I have to go and figure out a way to survive the next six weeks without my friends from Seattle Grace in my life.  Maybe I’ll form a support group…