Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

Shonda Rhimes on Burning Down The House...

Original airdate: 5/17/07

So the third season began with Meredith helping Izzie remove her prom dress and ended with Meredith helping Cristina get out of her wedding gown.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed but…I like a little symmetry.

This season was important to me.  It wasn’t as light as Season Two and for good reason – our characters were in a darker place.  I needed to put Meredith’s mother to rest, Izzie’s grief to rest, and the race for Chief to rest.  George needed to grow up on a monumental level and then come full circle to where he was when we first met him in the pilot.  Meredith had to finally try to face the fact that she’s damaged when it comes to relationships.  I wanted to put Bailey on the path of questioning her standing as The Chosen One.   Both Burke and Derek needed to hit a relationship wall, each in their own ways.  And then there’s Cristina…

Oh, the Cristina of it all.  What this season is about most of all – for all of our women – is  the idea of “having it all” is a myth.  And that was true for Cristina more than anyone.  Slowly, over the course of the season, we’ve watched as hard-nosed Yang sliced off little pieces of herself to accommodate Burke.  From helping Burke hide his tremor to Colin Marlowe telling her she’s not the woman he knew to prepping for the wedding, she slowly morphs from kickass surgeon-girl into a woman we don’t quite recognize in that wedding dress with penciled eyebrows.   I wanted you to have the feeling in the finale that she’s become this painted doll – beautiful, everyone’s fantasy bride, but a painted doll all the same.  No longer our Cristina.  There’s that wonderful moment where she begs Bailey to let her cut because a part of her knows she’s becoming someone she doesn’t recognize.  And then, just as she’s lost almost all of herself standing there in that gown ready to walk down the aisle, Burke is telling her that he can’t marry her.  Because even Burke realizes that this Cristina is not his Cristina.   It’s devastating.  I hope you noticed that in the beginning of the episode Cristina talks about a heart as a purely anatomical thing (“it pumps blood”) and then Burke’s vows are all about the heart as an emotional thing (“I promise to lay my heart in the palm of your hands”) and it’s so sad to realize that they have completely opposing views of the world.   I feel for Burke and you should too because he knows that, in a way, by leading, pushing, cajoling her down this path to being together, he’s done this to her – he’s changed her.  That the only way to save her from disappearing completely is to set her free.  And then in that wonderfully painful moment (how much do we love Sandra Oh and her incredible talent?) in the apartment, Cristina turns to Meredith and says “He’s gone.  I’m free.  Damn it.”  And it’s so nuanced and so layered and so tragic because she’s relieved and terrified and heartbroken and suffocated all at once.  Watching her journey back from this is going to be amazing next season.

George and Izzie and Callie:  you all have your opinions, very strong opinions, on how you feel about this love triangle.  I’m glad – strong opinions mean you care what happens.  In the finale, Izzie’s declaring herself and Callie’s fighting for her rightful territory.  That moment when Callie casually lets Izzie know that she’s not only been named Izzie’s boss but that she and George are trying to have a baby is very interesting.  Callie’s saying “don’t mess with me” in the only way she knows how.  About the baby thing – for the record, I am very strongly against anyone trying to have a baby to save a relationship.  It’s crazy because it never works and I highly recommend you don’t do it.  Plus it goes against every feminist bone in my body.  But it is also human to delude yourself into believing that you’re not having a baby to save your relationship, that instead having a baby is a way of taking your relationship to the next level.  And Callie gives that great speech about her hormones and her body.  I’ve been there and I know that it is real, this sudden baby rush that happens and, if you are firmly into your career, it freaks you out.  Callie’s just being as honest as she knows how to be with George.  Because she can’t bring up Izzie again – not when the last time she brought it up, George called Izzie a supermodel thereby suggesting that Callie was, well…not.

George is interesting is this episode.  Did you notice that after he looks at his test scores, his entire demeanor changes?  How he’s vulnerable in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time?   My favorite moments for him are in that scene with Bailey where he says he can’t repeat his intern year over again.  He just can’t.  And then when that girl in the locker room (Lexie Grey!  Lexie Grey!) asks if he has any advice, he says simply “No.”  I love that.  Because he doesn’t have any answers.  He thought he did and then he fails his intern exam and Izzie has to go and tell him she’s in love with him.  He has no idea what the future holds.  His whole future is one big question.

Alex and Ava.  My heart beats for them.  How amazing was Ava in those scenes?  And Alex…I’ve said before that Alex is Meredith’s mirror and I’m saying it again.  He’s too screwed up to give Ava a reason to stay because he doesn’t think he’s good enough.   And it’s no coincidence that this scene comes right before the MerDer scene where Derek is asking her, all pained and raw, to put him out of his misery and Meredith is WAY too screwed up to give him an answer.  They’re damaged people, Alex and Meredith.

What I love is that for Meredith, Cristina getting married has become this incredibly important thing – this sign – that maybe she and Derek can make it through.  That she can be healthy enough to let herself have this, have him.  She keeps saying to Cristina “you can do this” and she needs it to be true.  She needs it desperately.  Meredith, the girl with no family model for how a relationship works, looks to her best friend. So when Burke shuts the whole thing down, Meredith is almost as devastated as Cristina.  She does that long walk down the aisle, gets up in front of the wedding guests and tells them it’s over.  And she doesn’t just mean the wedding.  She means everything she hoped could be true.  She means the fairy tale.  She means the MerDer of it all.  It’s over.  It’s so over.  Because she no longer believes.

Bailey’s got a lot to contend with next year.  She thought she was going to be Chief Resident – she really believed it.  After all, the Chief spent the season practically anointing her with Chief Resident oil. But he also spent the season warning her.  Because from his own life, he knows what it is to get so caught up in a job that you neglect your family.  And he wouldn’t wish that on anyone.  That is a lesson Bailey’s not ready to learn – the fact that there may be a choice between family and career isn’t something this generation of women has been raised to believe.  It’s not something I’m ready to believe.  But, like I said, what the women start to see this season is that maybe they may not necessarily be able to have it all.  Because maybe having it all has a price.  Is it fair that Bailey has to pay this price?  Absolutely not.  But isn’t it ironic that Bailey’s got the strong family and (in her mind) a shaky career while Callie’s got the solid career and the shaky family life?

The Chief.  Aah, my Chief.  I love his full circle journey this season.  His wife starts out leaving him and now she’s come back.  And Derek hands him back the Chief job.  Which opens all sorts of possibilities.  Because if he’s going to do it all over again, how will he do it differently?  Is it possible for him to have it all?  Will he get Adele back if he chooses to stay Chief?  I love the wonderful moments with his wife, when they’ve lost the baby and he’s there for her.   For me, in the face of the supposed fairy tale playing out with Burke and Cristina, this is what real love is.  After years of mistakes and pain and problems, real love is two people standing together, choosing to be together, despite all that has gone wrong.  It is very grown-up, the Chief and Adele of it all. 

Derek.  Poor Derek.  He’s done his best to pull Meredith forward.  He’s done his best to be in this relationship and help her be in it too.  He has tried to be the best man.  But it wasn’t enough.  He can’t save her.  And so in that last moment, when he’s sitting with the Chief, and he tells the Chief that he can’t take the job, it is about so much more than just the job.  It is about his belief in himself.  I adore the moment in the locker room when he tells Mer that she’s the love of his life.  Mainly because Patrick says things like that better than anyone I’ve ever seen.  But also because he’s desperately trying to get through to her.  And when he says that he can’t leave her, he won’t leave her, because he can’t – it’s sad.  And she looks at him and just sort of…freaks out and and he pleads with that one word “Meredith”…it’s all so…the way he puts his head back as they leave the locker room…He can’t be more of a best man.  Where he’s going next season is going to be interesting to watch.

Last but not least are Addison and Mark.  We don’t see a lot of them in this episode.  And for good reason.  Their stories were done, finished, earlier.  For Addison, there’s a brand new future ahead over at Private Practice (Wednesday nights at 9 pm!).  For Mark, he starts fresh over at Grey’s next year.  Without Addison.  He’ll get to stand on his own and I think you’ll enjoy seeing it.

So that’s it.  That was our season.  I did my level best to burn it all down this season, to burn it to the ground so that we can have a place to build from next season.  Burning it down was hard.  But next season…oh, next season is all about the fun and the pain and the new beginnings.  Because our interns are going to become residents.  Because everyone is single again -- well, there is the little matter of Izzie and George and Callie…but still…

…the future is wide open, people.

Special thanks to Tony Phelan and Joan Rater for writing an excellent finale. And to Shoots With No Script for...well, shooting with a very long script.

Have a good summer.

Allan Heinberg on "Testing 1-2-3"

Original airdate: 5-10-07

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but, sometimes, terrible things happen on GREY’S ANATOMY.  Wonderful things happen, too.  People fall in love.  They have the best sex of their lives.  They have epiphanies about life and love and surgery and so forth.  But mostly on GREY’S ANATOMY people accidentally puncture their surgical gloves with their fingernails during a heart surgery.  Or they sleep with the wrong people -- again and again.  Or they die.  Occasionally they die and come back to life, but for the most part they die, and it’s devastating:  George’s father; Meredith’s mother; Meredith’s step-mother.  It can make for compelling television drama, but it’s not entirely unlike real life, where terrible things happen to us, to our friends, and to the world around us without warning or explanation.  And we’re human beings, most of us, so when terrible things happen, we want to know the reasons why.  We want the suffering to mean something.  And when the meaning isn’t immediately evident, we assign meaning as a way of comprehending, if not controlling, what seem like random acts of terribleness.  When bad things happen, we make sense of them by calling them tests.  Tests we either pass or fail before moving on to the next level of experience, but ones we hopefully learn from either way.

As Season Three hurtles toward its shattering, emotional conclusion, the interns at Seattle Grace face a very real and terrifying test:  a written exam, which will determine whether they become residents next season or whether they’ll be dropped from the surgical program altogether.  The attendings, too, are now just one day away from discovering the results of their season-long test.  Tomorrow they’ll find out whom Richard has recommended to become Chief of Surgery -- the same day Bailey and Callie discover Richard's choice for Chief Resident.

As usual, however, the professional challenges the doctors face are nothing compared to their personal ones.  Cristina and Burke are twenty-four hours from their wedding.  Izzie's bracing herself, about to lose George to Callie and Mercy West.   Alex discovers Ava has been concealing her true identity from him.  Derek feels he's losing Meredith in the wake of Susan's death.  And Meredith feels like she’s already lost everything:  her career, her relationship, and her family.

Meredith’s first test arrives before this episode even begins in that she has to decide whether or not to attend Susan’s funeral.  After the way Susan died, and Thatcher’s physically violent reaction to the news, Meredith would understandably harbor some ambivalence about going.  Especially on the day of the intern exam.  But in a surprising show of strength and resolve, Meredith doesn’t whine or deliberate over her decision.  She simply puts on her black dress and sets off for the funeral.  Even when Cristina gives her the out of asking the Chief to let her take the exam another day, Meredith refuses.  She doesn't need to reschedule the test.  She's ready.

What Meredith isn’t ready for, however, is her father’s showing up drunk and angry at the hospital and publicly humiliating her all over again.  At which point Meredith simply shuts down.  She sinks under the weight of her own life -- and her own perceived failures -- just as she did when she drowned.  Faced with her mother’s dismissing her life as merely “ordinary” -- and her father’s brutal rejection -- Meredith seems to will herself out of existence, failing to complete the intern exam and to communicate with Derek.  That is, until her friends intervene.  Confronted with the prospect of losing one of their own -- a test in and of itself -- the interns set aside their own conflicts and concerns and fight together for Meredith.  In the end, Meredith’s biggest test isn’t whether or not she fails or succeeds as an intern.  It’s whether she can allow herself to be helped -- to be taken care of -- to be loved -- by others.  When her biological family casts her aside, Meredith’s Seattle Grace family is there to support her unconditionally -- and, though it’s obviously painful and difficult, especially where Richard is concerned (“You’re not my father.”), Meredith ultimately lets them.

For Derek, who’s consigned to having to watch Meredith go through all this from the sidelines, it sometimes seems as if his entire relationship with Meredith has been a test.  And what's the right answer at this point?  To take her at her word that she's fine?  That she needs to go to Susan’s funeral by herself?  Or should he worry and hover -- making sure she’s still breathing -- as he’s been doing since she drowned?  In the end, Derek listens to Meredith -- he gives her the space she’s asked for -- but as a result, the distance between them grows wider than ever.  Derek ends up walking away from Meredith as she re-takes the intern exam -- leaving her in the care of her waiting friends -- but does that mean he’s failed her?  After all, he doesn’t succumb to the temptation of accepting the drink from the girl in the bar.  He remains true to Meredith, even if he remains excluded from her experience.  Again.  But for how long?

As for Cristina, the intern test seems to pose little or no challenge for her.  She has Callie’s cards and… she’s Cristina, she’s going to be fine.  And it’s not even her relationship with Burke that’s testing her at the moment.  It’s her relationship to the wedding itself:  the ceremony, the ritual, the vows -- all of which, in Cristina’s mind, have nothing to do with her and Burke.  But the demands of the wedding itself continue to test her patience and resolve.  And her sense of self.  Is she the sort of person who vows to love and cherish and honor till death do us part?  Burke knows she’s not.  Yet, in spite of himself, he’s expecting her to go through with it anyway.  Burke, too, faces the challenge of not judging Cristina's commitment to their marriage by the way she's participating (or not) in their wedding.  But in his mind, aren’t they one and the same?  Does her reticence to commit herself to him in public betray a deeper reluctance to commit to him at all?  According to Burke, it will all come down to the moment he sees her walking toward him down the aisle.  At which time, he’ll know.  He’ll know the answer to the question, “Do you, Preston, take this woman, Cristina, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

But with some tests, there are no right answers.

Ava lies to Alex, concealing her true identity, and in doing, she fails him.  She betrays his trust.  But it seems she does so for Alex.  She keeps her identity a secret so that she can remain with him at Seattle Grace, rather than return to the marriage she was trying to escape in the first place.  It’s not the right thing to do, certainly, but it is an act of love.  In the end, even Alex can see that.  But how much will he be able to trust someone who lied to him?  Even if she did so out of love?

Addison's test is played largely for comedy in this episode as she struggles to come to terms with her infertility in the face of a seeming army of pregnant women.  And at no time does she ever put her personal struggle above the needs of her patients or her friendship with Callie.  She passes this test several times over, but she does so, it seems, at the risk of her own long-term happiness.

And it’s far too late for Izzie and George to do the “right” thing with regard to each other and Callie.  George and Callie’s marriage has already been compromised.  And no matter how real or deep Izzie and George’s feelings for each other are, their relationship has been compromised, as well.  And up until this point in his life, George has considered himself a highly moral person.  He’s not a man who cheats on his wife.  So what is the right answer for George, at this point?  Does he remain at Seattle Grace and continue to try to deny his feelings for Izzie?  Or should he tell Callie the truth, even if it means hurting her and ending their marriage?  Or does he stay the course by keeping silent, recommitting to the marriage, and sparing Callie’s feelings?  There is no right answer at this point.  George is a highly moral person doing his utmost to be the best doctor -- the best friend -- the best husband he can be.  But people, no matter how well intentioned, make mistakes.  If life is a series of tests, there is no perfect score.  You do the best you can and try to learn from your mistakes, because before you know it, life has another test in store.  And another.  And then one after that.  Not unlike episodes of series television. 

Speaking of which, we have only one episode left of GREY’S ANATOMY this season, and it’s epic.  And we’re already well into our work on Season Four -- talking about how far the characters have come in three seasons and where they seem to want to go next. 

Thanks for reading,
Allan Heinberg

Shonda Rhimes on "The Other Side of This Life"

Original airdate: 5/3/07

So I owe you an explanation.  For this episode (for these two episodes, I should say).  I owe you that.  You’ve stuck with me through Season Three and now you want answers, damn it!  You want an explanation.

You are preaching to the proverbial choir.  If you were a preacher and I was a choir.   Which…I’m not a choir cause I can’t sing but maybe you are actually a preacher and…rambling.  The point is, when I watch TV and things happen like the Scooby Gang raises Buffy out of her scary grave or Felicity goes back in time or they take their sweet time telling me what those numbers mean over on Lost...I get a little nutty.  I sometimes get irate.  Because these are my shows.  These are my people.  These are my FRIENDS THESE WRITERS ARE MESSING WITH.

I don’t say this lightly.  I am a hardcore TV watching fanatic.   I was deprived of it as a kid.  So now, as an adult, I am deep into it.   I dig my TV.   So when shows take leaps, I go a little out of my mind.

I go a little out of my mind, I shake my fist to the heavens, I tear at my hair and I ask the writing gods “WHY?!!!!” 

“WHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!!!!!!!”

I go all drama on my own ass and then I lie back down on the sofa and keep watching.   Mainly because I’m lazy and shaking one’s fist to the heavens is exhausting.  But also because I’m interested in seeing what happens next.  And because the writers have asked me to leap and so I’m gonna leap with them.

Also because, now?   Now I get it.  I so totally get it.  It’s freakin’ gotten.

Here’s what happened to me:

I was sitting in the editing room one day watching Mer and Burktina and the gang doing all the stuff they do.  I love the editing room – it’s like this cocoon where I’m alone with the characters (and the editor) and it’s where I get a lot of my ideas.  And for the first time ever since working on this show, I got an idea that was Grey’s Anatomy but…not Grey’s Anatomy.  It was something else.  It was Addison driving down the freeway with her hair blowing all over her face.  So I started writing it down, this not Grey’s Anatomy idea.  I started writing it down in secret because I knew Betsy and Shoots With No Script would very gently explain that I had lost my mind and then send in the guys with the strait jackets.  Because we are very busy here at Greys.  We don’t have time for non-Grey’s ideas.  We are a hard-working people.

Except I had this idea and it had already worked its way under my skin and I had to write it down.   Or else I’d get in one of those moods.  Things happen when I’m in those moods.  Things like Meredith drowning.  And I love Mer and wanted to keep her away from the water.  So I wrote it down.   And I gave it to the studio and the network.

It became something.  A script that was part-Grey’s, part something else.  And then it became news around town and suddenly my tiny little written down something was being paid a lot of attention by the outside world.  Next thing you know, they’re calling it a spinoff.

This episode, it’s NOT a spinoff.  It’s Addison going down to LA to complete the story we’ve been laying out for her for two seasons.  It’s the culmination of Meredith’s family story.  It’s Burktina and the wedding and Izzie, Callie and George and that hideous triangle they are stuck in.  It’s the beginning of the end of Season Three.

And I’m warning you now: the ride to the end of the season?  You may want to buckle up and store your luggage in the overhead compartment because this ride is gonna be bumpy.  I’ll explain more after the finale.  I’ll talk about where we are headed in Season Four.   Because I think Season Four is gonna rock.  The fun is back in Season Four.   But for right now, I guess I’ll just talk about the here and the now.  About what is right in front of us.

So.  Even though we took this detour down to Los Angeles, what I want to talk about is what happened in Seattle.  To Meredith.  To Cristina.  To Izzie.  Because things are not working out the way they planned.  George is leaving for Mercy West and Izzie feels responsible.  Cristina’s facing the fact that she’s going to have to compromise what she wants yet again for Burke.  And Meredith…well, Meredith is losing another mother.  Worse, she’s losing her father.  And even worse than that, she may be losing Derek.

But my favorite moment is Alex.  Who, when Ava asks him what happened to him that has made it so hard for him to connect, simply shrugs and says “Maybe I don’t remember.”  He remembers.  But he can’t face up to it.  Not yet.  Alex is the guy we know the least about and the one struggling the most.  And I kinda love him for it.  Because he wants to be a better guy – he’s just not sure he IS a better guy.

In this episode, our people in Seattle all hit a crossroads while our girl in Los Angeles finds a new road altogether.  I’m hoping you like the new road.  I’m hoping I get a chance to show you how good this road can be. 

But for now, the detour is over.  Now, we’ve got the last two episodes of this season to bring to you.  Where we are going might make you shake your fists to the heavens and scream.  But we are leaping.  So, if your sofa is comfy, maybe you could lie back down and leap with us?

New post will go up tomorrow...

Shonda should have a new blog entry tomorrow. Enjoy tonight's show!