Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

Pete Nowalk on "Give Peace a Chance"...

Original Airdate: 10-29-09

So there’s a lot to talk about here – the fact that this was an all-Derek-all-the-time episode, that this was Chandra Wilson’s first time directing, that Izzie's still MIA...  But before I get into any of that, answer me this:

You’re on a road trip.  You’ve been driving for hours, your 3 kids all under the age of six are asleep in the backseat, when you realize you have to pee.  Do you…

A)    Stop at a gas station, wake the kids, and drag them into the restroom in order to relieve yourself?

B)    Use one of your kids’ diapers, thereby allowing yourself to keep driving and let the kids keep sleeping?

C)    Stop reading this blog because you’re so disgusted by this topic?

We played this game in the writers room one day.  Shonda had seen an episode of Oprah where a mother confessed to doing B.  (Here’s the link: http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090311-tows-mom-truth/3).  Naturally, we all went around the room debating what we’d do.  Would we really use the diaper? Or would we do anything in the world to avoid said deplorable action?  Some of us thought this mom was smart -- who wants to schlep a bunch of kids into a public bathroom?  Others were a little horrified. Diapers are for babies.  Or astronauts.  Not grown adults who should know better.  The diaper, you see, became a controversial topic around here.  

Okay, I know what you’re thinking.  "That's your job?  To sit around and have potty talk??  And now you’re admitting that to the entire blogiverse?????"

I don’t blame you.  But this is the way a writers room works.  You chat, tell stories, discuss Oprah...until an idea hits.  And then you work like mad to fit it into your episode.  Hence, the diaper.  

Do surgeons really wear diapers?  Well, depends who you ask.  Our wonderful medical researcher Meg found a blog that mentioned surgeons wearing diapers during particularly long surgeries.  And one of our consulting surgeons said dude surgeons sometimes wear condom catheters.  (Yeah, that's a real thing apparently.)  Point is, it wasn’t that big of a leap for us to go diaper.  Our doctors are hardcore by nature. Combine that with the threat they're feeling from the Mercy West residents and you can understand while they'll do anything to win.  As Lexie tells Jackson, if she needs to pee in a diaper to help Derek get through his impossible surgery, she'll pee in a diaper.  Which of course just drove Cristina crazy jealous...  

Cristina was a shoe-in to win that pen-in-a-cup contest...but then she choked.  Happens to the best of us. That left Owen having to cope with the fact that his girlfriend was fiending to put on a diaper.  Admittedly, it's not the sexiest thing to picture your partner wearing.  But I think it speaks to Owen's overall good nature that he found a way to be okay with it, even gifting Cristina her very own marathon surgery to cheer her up.  And then, when Derek thwarts that plan, he goes as far as to sexily teach Cristina the right way to work the microscope.  You gotta admit, the dude's a pretty awesome boyfriend.  

Speaking of awesome boyfriend...  I'm sorry, I mean awesome husband...  

Derek Shepherd.

This episode probably felt different.  I only say that because that’s exactly how I felt the minute we started working on it.  As you've probably noticed, we’re trying to experiment more this season.  And that’s probably uncomfortable for some of you.  It was for me.  When we first decided to focus this episode solely on Derek and his patient, I was a little scared.  Most of this patient story (inspired by a case told to us by Dr. Robert Bray, an amazing neurosurgeon here in LA) involves Derek staring at a tumor.  Not cutting, not operating, not talking to anyone.  Like I said, scary.  

In retrospect I’m really glad we told this story this way.  As Derek says in the voiceover, what drew him to surgery was the quiet.  The deep, intense, long-ass focus required to make it through a marathon surgery where any wrong turn can result in death.  And this episode really reflects that.  It’s quieter than a typical episode.  More single-minded.  Derek is our sole focus.  And really, what an amazing character to spend an entire episode with.  Watch Patrick Dempsey on your screen and you can’t help but be struck by how much he says without saying anything.  The guy can pretty much give you an entire soliloquy with just one look.  That’s a rare talent, and we really wanted to use that to our advantage in an episode about stillness and peace.  

It also seemed like the perfect time to do our Derek-focused episode since we had little time to shoot with Ellen Pompeo (8 1/2 months pregnant at the time we shot this one).  Typically, if Derek's doing a once-in-a-lifetime neurosurgery, Meredith would be at his side.  But since we couldn't physically do that, we had her be there for him in a different way -- by helping him talk through the problem, by holding a phone to her ear for 26 hours...  (I'm guessing Cristina and Meredith have an unlimited friend-to-friend calling plan in case anyone was worried about their minutes).  So Mer was there for Der even when it seemed impossible...and I'm very jealous.  That's the truth.  I’m jealous that Meredith and Derek get to work together and support each other and speak their secret surgery language together AND still actually love each other.  I guess they’ve been through their fare share of relationship crap.  They’ve earned a little peace.  Still, I'm jealous.  

Back to the very different nature of this episode, helped along by the fact that there's still no sign of Izzie. She's still off god knows where and not telling Alex squat.  Which is just harsh.  Sure, the guy tried to pretend that he didn’t care whether she’d show up for her IL-2 treatment, but we all know that's just his way of coping.  Who doesn’t show up for their life-saving IL-2 treatment?  Especially a doctor??  That’s just irresponsible.  And crazy…  Yeah, I could go on.  Poor frigging Alex.  If I was Reed in that last scene I would have wanted to give the guy a hug.  And I think the look on her face said pretty much that.  But they just met.  They’re not even friends.  Or frenemies.  No hugs allowed.  Which is why that scene at the end with Alex sitting in the support chair with no one to support just kills me.  WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO IZZIE???  

Okay, it’s a little insane for me to pretend I don’t know where she is.  I do.  And eventually you will, too. Onward...

Last but not least, I'd like to applaud Chandra Wilson.  She acts, she sings, and now she directs... and sometimes all at the same time.  I have a feeling Chandra’s the kind of person that’s good at everything she does.  You know the type from high school – the classmate that’s all quiet and unassuming and not saying anything about the Algebra test you’re freaking about because she already knows she’s gonna ace it.  Cause that’s what Chandra did directing this episode.  And it wasn’t an easy one to direct, let me tell you.  All those scenes in the OR are very hard to shoot – very technical, very hard to dramatize -- and she rocked it.

Alrighty then, I'm off to set to watch some scenes for episode 610 (our holiday episode, written by the awesome Krista Vernoff.)  The end of this blog means the official end of episode 607 for me.  In other words, my own sense of peace.  I'll sleep well tonight.  Hope you do, too.

Bill Harper on "I Saw What I Saw"...

Original Airdate: 10-22-09

So, my kids and I were watching this nature film about Meerkats, and at one very tense moment, a giant eagle swoops in and snatches up a terrified little meerkat and carries it off to its nest of doom to be eaten, and all of his meerkat brothers were very sad and so were my kids.  My daughter actually said: “That’s so sad.”  And I said to her “What if this were a movie about a family of hungry Eagles?  Then it would be awesome.”  

Because that’s the truth – it all depends on your perspective.  Facts are facts but the Truth – the Truth is all about perception.  It’s personal.  It’s the reason we have a justice system.  Because several people can come away from the same event with very different stories, based on who they are and what their situation is and how they perceived what they saw.  The Truth is their truth.   Truth is perception. 

This is something I’ve believed for a long time, so I was really excited when it was decided that this episode would be a very different kind of episode than we usually do -- something we’d talked about doing for a while -- a “Rashomon” Story.  

A Rashomon story isn’t a new idea – it’s named for a 1950 Kurosawa film, in which a crime is depicted from the conflicting points of view of four witnesses, the truth lying somewhere in between their stories.  Nor was it a new idea for Grey’s – like I said, we’d been wanting to do something like this for three seasons, but for one reason or another, we hadn’t.  But now there were great reasons to do it…

With Izzie having just left Alex in the wake of her firing and Meredith recovering from Liver surgery, we knew we’d be missing a couple of our regular people.  And the merger of Seattle Grace and Mercy West has brought a handful of competitive new residents.  And with them, we had the opportunity to have a look at Seattle Grace from a different perspective, through the eyes of these relative strangers.  We also knew that one of the Mercy Westers would be fired, as fallout from the merger, just as Izzie was.  So it was a great way to pit the residents against one another.   And we could get a fresh perspective on these new interlopers as well.  

You know that thing they say about rattlesnakes?  How they’re more threatened by you than you are by them?  That’s how I felt about these Mercy West Residents, who had our residents so threatened last week.  In the previous episode, when April’s passive-aggressive haughtiness was unmasked, her insecurity and exposure really put me on her side.  And, clearly, it had an effect on her, too.  April starts this episode with an attitude of not fighting the home team, but being a team player.  Just bringing her best self to the job.  It’s Reed whose competitive fires have been stoked, and she’s grumbling from the very beginning about how much Alex and Cristina have it out for them.

And the different structure of this episode gave us a great opportunity to see it. Cristina handing off Cathy Becker’s charts, for example:  from Cristina’s point of view, she’s just handing off cases to available doctors, solving a problem.  From April’s point of view, she’s snarkily palming off crappy cases onto the new kids.

And Charles sees Alex as a self-involved douche, ignoring patients and taking personal calls.  And, from his point of view, it’s the truth.  But when you see the story from Alex’s perspective…

Poor Alex.   He’s coming apart.  With Izzie gone God knows where, it was fun to use Alex’s relationship with his phone to tell the story of his tenuous connection to her.  And when he finally gets a connection, when he finally gets through to her, it’s in the height of the chaos – the worst possible time.  And when these new (from his perspective) idiots can’t save a patient by themselves… he has to make the right choice, he has to hang up, even though he knows he might not ever get her back.   So Reed and Charles see a selfish maniac shoving his way in to recklessly treat  -- maybe kill -- a patient.  But we get Alex’s story, and we see Alex doing the right thing, saving the patient, even though it might have cost him the only good thing he’s ever had.   

Meanwhile, Lexie comes across the patient in the midst of a struggle she’s having  -- against herself.  Another theme that kept emerging for me as I wrote the episode was Responsibility.  As everyone is seeking to find out who was responsible for Cathy Becker’s death, it looks for a while like it might have been Lexie.  But in the end, Lexie steps up for the patient she is ultimately responsible for, and gives him the care he needs. 

One of my favorite parts of this story is actually what it reveals about Arizona – Her commitment to helping this poor kid suffer his unbearable agony is no surprise.  But her anger and impatience at a young resident who can’t control her feelings is a color of Arizona’s character we hadn’t really seen yet.  She’s a hardass teacher, and I don’t think we knew that about her.  

And Richard.  This merger is clearly not going the way he might have hoped -- it’s barely underway, and things are getting more and more chaotic.  He drives this episode with command and control, pushing to get to the bottom of what is essentially a murder mystery in his hospital.  And in the end, from his perspective, he’s on top of it, he’s solved a problem.  Only to find that -- from Derek’s perspective -- he is the problem. 

But is that the truth?  Is this all Richard’s fault?  The Merger, the firings, Cathy Becker’s death?  From his perspective, all he’s ever done is try to save this hospital.  So the truth depends on where you stand, what you saw. Facts are much more easy to deal with.  Truth is messy, way too personal and, as Meredith points out, way too full of questions.  Like, where is Izzie?  Is she coming back?   How far can this hospital be pushed before there’s a breaking point?  And the same can be asked of Richard and Derek’s friendship.    

This episode was a really different one for us – part murder mystery, part puzzle, and, in the midst of this unusual framework, hopefully you felt it was your same Grey’s Anatomy – where our doctors struggle to connect with each other and connect with their patients.  It was a challenge and a lot of fun to figure out, and I hope you enjoyed it too.  I want to say a quick thank you to our cast and crew, who were called upon for more work than usual in shooting this episode, and the episode’s director, Allison Liddi-Brown. And to you, as always… thanks for watching!  

Mark Wilding on 'Invasion'...

Original Airdate: 10-15-09

I’m sure most of you have been fired at some point in your life.  I have.  In fact, I’ve been fired at several points.  Mostly from TV shows.  Mostly for a job poorly done.  I’ve been fired over the phone, in person, just before major holidays, a few months after I bought my first house – I’ve been fired a bunch.  The people who fired me all had the usual litany of predictable reasons for letting me go.  Budget considerations, you don’t write the voice of the show, we’re going a different direction.  Every tortured explanation designed to make you feel better about yourself.  And every one pretty much a lie.  Because when they fire you the truth is they just don’t want you.  After it’s done, after the axe has fallen, there’s a predictable process to the whole thing that’s pretty much time-honored.  At least in Hollywood.  First, you make sure the surviving writers don’t see you (it would be like Death coming to call).  Second, you immediately go home to your wife or girlfriend or dog and get their sympathy.  Third, you say the show was never for you anyway.  And fourth, you return on the weekend to gather your things.  It works that way for everyone.  Executives, writers, actors, directors, assistants – if you work in Hollywood you will get fired and go through that humiliating scenario as sure as the sun comes up in the morning.  

My favorite firing (at least of me) took place many years ago on a set made to look like Central Park.  It was the one they used on “Seinfeld”.  I wasn’t on “Seinfeld” at the time.  I was on a different show but I had a view of the park.  A very good view.  A good enough view where I could witness several of the writers of the show I was on being escorted to a little wooden bench in the fake park and told their services were no longer needed.  

I watched this grim scenario unfold over a couple of days from my office in the bungalow on the show where I thought I was still employed (the show shall go nameless, as shall the name of the person who fired me --- good news though, that person was fired from a show recently and it made my heart sing with joy).  A week passed and I believed I’d escaped being fired and so thought nothing of it when I sat on that same wooden bench to have a sandwich one day.  Halfway through my sandwich I looked up to find my boss standing over me and telling me that I didn’t seem very happy on the show.  I took a bite of sandwich and then replied that, no, indeed, I was happy on the show.  And he said no, I don’t think you are happy.  And THAT’S when I realized – in that very moment -- that I WAS SITTING ON THE FIRING BENCH and that maybe he wasn’t out there to have lunch with me.  And I was fired.  All of which brings me to the toughest firing we’ve probably ever seen at Seattle Grace.  That of Izzie Stevens…

Yup, Izzie is gone.  Fired by the Chief who, these days, is looking for the slightest excuse to fire ANYONE.  Maybe she went back home.  Or to visit friends.  Or just took off for points unknown.  But yes, people, Izzie Stevens, third year resident and surgical rising star, no longer works at Seattle Grace/Mercy West.  The hospital, new name and all, is in her rear view mirror.  George’s death, her stage four cancer, coming back to work too soon – it all proved too much – and now she’s headed off to God knows where.  And it was heartbreaking to see her get fired, to see her plead for her job but firings are pretty much always horrible.  And I wanted the scene to convey that sudden sense of loss, of hopelessness, and with the help of Katie Heigl’s fantastic acting, I think it did.  But more on Izzie and the broken-hearted Alex later.   

The theme of the episode was “Invasion”.  It seemed appropriate.  New doctors were coming over from Mercy West.  Callie’s Dad was paying an unwelcome visit to the hospital with the family priest in tow.  Billy the Burglar got beat up after he broke in to or “invaded” a golfer’s house.  And Arizona based her whole speech on the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor – which was also an invasion of sorts.  All sorts of folks were coming from the outside and invading our people’s space.  The first time we see Jackson Avery, he’s jogging towards the hospital, almost running into Cristina.  And then the next thing you know he’s leaning across Alex in the elevator to choose his floor.  Annoying!  Invasive!  Just plain…rude!  And from her sick bed, where she’s recovering from her liver donation to Thatcher the previous week, an undaunted Meredith has taken charge.  “This is our ship!”  The question is, are our people up for the fight?  Well first, let’s talk about those new residents, the doctors they’re going up against…

Reed, Charles, April and Jackson.  The Mercy West crowd.  Who are just as insecure and uncertain about their new situation as our people.  And our residents are understandably nervous because, like any invader, these MW guys are a threat.  They’re smart, they fight dirty if they have to and, like our residents, they’re not going down without a fight.  Of course, our people don’t know that at the beginning of the episode.  But they sure do by the end.  They’ve been in a helluva dog fight.  When we see Mercy West’s orange-clad foursome at the end of the episode, surveying their surgical domain from the exact same place where our people were at the beginning of the episode, we know that they’re here to stay.  They’re just as determined to make this their new home as our people were when they first came to the hospital.

The new actors – their real names are Nora, Robert, Jesse and Sarah -- were a blast to work with.  I probably should have known all their credits and what shows they’ve been on before we started shooting but I didn’t.  And none of that mattered because they were all so strong.  And then when I saw them on screen, they looked great and were wonderfully believable as real doctors.  Which was a great relief and should make for a fun rest of the season.  So, let’s talk about the pairings.

Lexie and April.  We got to see a new side of Lexie.  One who could fight dirty and be a mean girl if she had to be.  That is until the passive-aggressive April herself is undone when she finds out Lexie has read her notebook with all her little self-help homilies.  That’s when Lexie softened.  Which is what you do when you’ve trumped someone that badly.  When you’ve kicked their obnoxious ass all over the place.  After all, you can only be so gleeful in victory.  When Lexie sees April tear up outside the scrub room, it makes her realize that even though April’s been pretty obnoxious throughout, maybe we’re not who we are in our worst moments.  Maybe we’re, hopefully, something better. 

Charles and Izzie.  Izzie thinks that she’s found someone who maybe just maybe, reminds her a little of George.  Certainly not a complete George replacement but someone who’s as charming and self-deprecating.  And might someday be a good friend.  And it goes to Izzie’s trusting instincts and her need to fill the void left by George that she quickly gloms onto a sympathetic soul like Charles.  But, as the Chief tells her later, it’s a different era.  The old rules don’t apply – be it with friendships or with jobs.  A lesson that Izzie learns not just once in this episode, but twice.  First when Charles brags about her being his surgical bitch and, second, when she makes that terrible medical mistake.

Jackson and Cristina.  I liked them going toe to toe and especially loved Cristina finally deciding to hold up the white flag of surrender.  Throwing in the surgical towel.  We’ve been hinting in the previous episodes that without a Cardio God, she just doesn’t have her heart in it anymore.  And as for Sandra Oh -- in the scene when she’s crying with Meredith (and pining for Burke), well, my God, she was superb. 

Alex and Reed.   As Izzie says in the residents lounge at the start of the episode, Reed is not a big person.  Still, as Alex finds out, she can flat out play this game.  As much as I loved their competitive dynamic, each trying to outmaneuver the other one, I also liked showing our doctors as less than compassionate with their patient.  I’ve visited a number of hospitals in the last few years and I’ve invariably found that our make-believe doctors generally pay much more attention to their patients than the real-life ones.  It IS a struggle to have your voice heard in hospitals, to not be ignored.  Sometimes they treat you less like a patient and more like, well, an invader.  Of course, I might be holding them to a higher standard because my only reference point is a pretend hospital.

Now, back to Izzie and the Chief and Alex.  When you tell the Chief of Surgery that you NEED this job, that you’ve got nothing else in your life, DESPITE the fact you’re married, you are in a very, very bad state indeed.   I understand the part about sneaking off without telling anyone after you’ve been fired (see above) but to just leave your husband a note – that’s brutal.  No wonder Alex has issues.  Every time he puts himself out there, gets close to someone (remember Ava?) the poor guy gets knocked back on his heels. 

By the way, in the firing scene, that beautiful shot when we come around Izzie to see all the emotions playing on her face was designed by the show’s director, Tony Phelan.  His idea was to really get inside her emotionally at that moment.  Tony had a lot of other great ideas for the episode.  Ideas I would never have thought of because I’m not a director and Tony is.  (I mostly just sat there and said “Good idea, Tony.  Hey, they’re making omelettes.  You want me to get you an omelette, Tony?  You sure?  Because they’re really good omelettes.  I’ve already had two but they’re so good I may have a third.  Are you sure you don’t want one, Tony?).  Tony’s also one of the writers on our show.  He is multi-talented.  I am not.  Still, everything you see in this blog was my idea.  NOT Tony’s.  If he does have ideas about it, frankly, he can keep them to himself.  Give him all the credit you want for the episode, but this blog, my blog, is where I draw the line.

Finally, I want to talk about Callie and Arizona.  Shonda came up with the idea of Mr. Torres showing up with the family priest.  I immediately said YES because anytime I can see Hector Alizondo on my TV screen, I’m all for it.  In the scene where he’s quoting the Bible at Callie, he really is afraid he’s going to lose her.  He’s desperate, yanking out those index cards like her very life depends on it.  It was Hector’s idea to use the cards.  He didn’t think his character would know that stuff of the top of his head, which is how I originally wrote it.  And he was right.  And it worked beautifully.  And that final scene when he and Callie are outside the hospital and he’s asking her if she’ll still get married, still have kids… I really, really liked that scene.  And I really, really liked their whole story.  All told, I thought the episode came out pretty well.  At least well enough for me not to worry about having to clean out my desk for another couple of weekends…

Jenna Bans on "Tainted Obligation"...

Original Airdate: 10-8-09

So I’m a large nerd.  I like my parents.  A lot.  I like to hang out with them, I talk to them almost every day on the phone.  I was the person in high school who was like, nah, I don’t think I’m going to that party, I’ll probably just chill with the ole’ parental unit.  We’ll order a pizza, play a few board games – it’s gonna be a blast if you want to stop by…yep, I was that girl. (I know you’re wondering and yes, shockingly, I still had a few friends my own age.)  Even now, I get a three day weekend and I’m usually off to Minneapolis to hang with the parents.  Now I recognize that that’s super weird and slightly creepy to most people, including my husband.  He’s all, ew nerd, stop being so obsessed with your parents.  But I am.  I just like ‘em.  They’re good peeps.  And they gave me a very happy and stable childhood – which I took for granted until I moved to Los Angeles and started working in television – because amongst creative types, I’m figuring out the normal upbringing is quite the rarity. 

My point being, it was REALLY easy for me to understand Lexie in this episode – ‘cause that’s how I imagine she grew up with Susan and Thatcher.  There was taco night, and movie night, and if she had homework issues, one of them was always around to help.  So now that her Dad needs some of her liver, recovering alcoholic or not, she’s gonna do it.  She’s not even thinking about the Chief’s upcoming merger – and the fact that recovering from a major surgery will put her on the bench, out of the game, for at least a month. Lexie doesn’t blink, because family isn’t an obligation to her like it is for a lot of people -  it’s a gift.  But Meredith, as we all know, did not have such a charmed childhood.  So you can hardly blame her for shutting down emotionally the second Thatcher shows up and pukes blood on her shoes.  Hell, anyone would draw the line at puking on the shoes, right? (Hey, fun fact – that wasn’t Ellen Pompeo’s feet, that was her stand-in’s feet that got thrown up on ‘cause Ellen was all pregnant and we got her off her feet whenever it was possible.)

What’s interesting about this storyline was that I thought I wrote a reconciliation story – between Mer and her father.  I thought I wrote the episode that was going to put all the bad blood behind them for good. And it did, in a way – Mer tells Thatcher the door is open, which is pretty huge.  And though it was incredibly hard for her to work up the courage to say that to him, she knew it was the only thing that would let him – or alleviate his guilt enough - to allow her to save his life.  But something happened in this story during the shooting process.  It changed – subtly, but substantially.  Here’s how it started -- Ellen Pompeo came to me on the first day of shooting and wanting to change that speech she gives to Thatcher.  She wanted to add a simple line, to have Mer say “I want you to do this for her.”  Because for Ellen, this story wasn’t a Mer/Thatcher reconciliation story – it was a Mer/Lexie story.  It was a story about these two women, who have done this awkward dance around each other for two seasons now, finally becoming sisters.  Ellen insisted that her main reason for doing what she does, for being completely vulnerable in front of the man who has hurt her in more ways than we can count at this point, was Lexie.  She was doing it for Lexie.  And the more I thought about that, the more I became convinced she was absolutely right.  And when that became clear to me, everything sort of fell into place.  That last scene when Derek’s watching Mer wake up, Lexie at her side, having slept with her all night, was even more emotional.  It wasn’t just about Lexie being grateful – that was there for sure – but now it was about Lexie unconditionally loving her sister.  And Mer actually loving her back.  Now I don’t think they’ll be having slumber parties and pillow fights with each other any time soon, but still.  From strangers two seasons ago to actual sisters is pretty amazing progress – especially for someone who’s ambivalent to the very idea of family ala Meredith Grey.

And though it seemed that Derek had a small part in Meredith’s story tonight, what he did for her was as important as if he had talked her face off for six scenes – he let her have space.  It’s funny, ‘cause in the writers’ room he DID have six scenes of talking her face off – he was originally going to point out all the pros and cons of donating the liver, he was going to be sort of a sounding board for her as she worked it out.  But then we came to something better, the idea of visually showing Mer struggle while Derek watches, knowing he can’t help her with this. Knowing to stop Cristina from going to her because she can’t help Mer either.  He knows his wife well enough to realize this was a huge, huge decision that she had to come to herself – and simply waited, ready to support her, whatever she should decide. 

So get this – the story that was probably most emotional for me to write?  Irving gets a new penis.  And not because standards & practices gave me hell about it. (Which they did  - in the most gentle, polite way possible.  In fact, if you read the emails that went from ABC to our prop master, Angela, to me and Shonda Rhimes, you would laugh very heartily.  Because there was waaaay too much discussion about the penis.  The number of times we used the word, the ways we used the word, the actual shape of the apparatus… It was a very fun and incredibly absurd process to witness.) I loved this story because I hate the idea that once you’re old, your life is over.  I hate when people treat their aging parents like old furniture they want to get rid of but have to find a place for so they stick ‘em in the corner and forget about them.  I suppose because watching their parents age is too painful, so they just…put them away.  But the thing is, the truth is, the truth that actually inspired a lot of the writing, is something my Grandma always said.  She used to say that even though she was eighty, with horrible arthritis, she still looked in the mirror every morning and didn’t recognize herself.  ‘Cause inside, she still felt the same way she did when she was twenty.  That’s what I thought about while writing Irving– this guy just has no idea where all the time went.  And what I loved about the actors who played this story is that they made it so real – the son and daughter-in-law weren’t evil, just overly concerned about their Dad. (Okay, maybe just a bit condescending too…) And the amazing Ralph Waite (did anyone recognize him as Pa Walton from ‘The Waltons?’) played Irving so truthfully, without leaning too heavily on the comedy, he made us believe he NEEDED this surgery.  That it was truly the key to enjoying his golden years – that it would give him his “tomorrow.”  And how great was Eric Dane defending Irving’s right to a sex life? I wanted to cheer when he finally told the son and daughter-in-law what was what.  

Cristina, on the other hand, didn’t have so much fun with Irving’s penis.  (I believe that was mention #3, Standards & Practices.) Poor Cristina. She’s really struggling and lost these days.  Without a cardio god to mentor her, she’s adrift.  So much so that she turns a simple tick removal into a major surgery.  So much so that she says to the Chief, who has had a helluva crappy day himself– cut me from the program.  It’s clear at this point Cristina’s willing to do just about anything to get her surgical groove back.  And I can promise you, it’s going to be an interesting journey this season to see just how far she will go.

And Izzie.  Poor Izzie. The girl’s living with cancer, lost her best friend, impulsively got married and dragged her husband away to live in the woods.  That takes a lot out of a person.  I need to seriously recover on the couch for an hour after I go to the grocery store – I can’t imagine the emotional and physical fatigue Izzie must be feeling right now.  I think by the end of this episode, after Owen tells her that channeling her experience as a patient at Seattle Grace is undermining her strength as a doctor at Seattle Grace – she’s wondering if she made a mistake.  She’s wondering if Alex and Derek and now Owen might be right – that she came back to work too soon.  That she’s not emotionally ready to be cutting into people yet.  Because I think every doctor wants to believe all their terminal patients can be Izzie – but the odds tell another story. And I would imagine there’s a very careful dance doctors have to do between acting like a scientist and acting like a patient advocate and what Owen says to her at the end sticks with her – now that she’s been through this transformative experience – cancer - she has to decide who she’s going to be at the hospital.  She’s going to have to re-invent herself as a surgeon.

Lots of good stuff coming your way in season six, lots of BIG stuff.  It might be my favorite season so far – although I tend to say that a lot, about every episode, and no one in the writers’ room believes me anymore.  So I’ll just leave you with this little nugget.  When you’re shooting an episode of television, there’s this thing called the “call sheet.”  It’s basically a notice sent to all cast and crew, telling them what time to be on set the next morning, the order scenes will be shot in, make-up and hair requirements for characters, special effects needed, things like that.  It’s a handy little document.  And this is what our call sheet said the night before we shot the opening scene with Alex:  DUE TO THE PRESENCE OF A BEAR ON SET, BREAKFAST WILL NOT BE SERVED. PLEASE EAT BREAKFAST BEFORE YOU ARRIVE AND DO NOT BRING ANY FOOD ITEMS ONTO THE SET.  I read that, laughed for about ten minutes straight at the absurdity, then got kind of scared for the crew and Justin Chambers (it’s a supposedly trained “Hollywood” bear but you can’t have a granola bar around in case it goes all “me bear, me hungry” and eats you?)  And then it suddenly hit me – how is this my work?  How is it work to go to the woods and watch a huge grizzly bear scare the crap out of Alex Karev?  How is it my work to read funny emails about the overuse of the word penis? (#4.)  I came to the conclusion that I don’t say it nearly enough - I love my job. I love the people I work with.  I loved every minute of writing and shooting this episode.  And I love all of you for being such loyal, amazing fans of the show.  I hope you loved watching it.  Or at least liked it.  Or at least laughed once or twice while checking email and paying bills.  

Joan Rater on "(I Always Feel Like) Somebody's Watchin' Me"...

Original Airdate: 10-1-09

Hi and WELCOME TO SEASON SIX!  Kind of amazing if you think about it.  It’s amazing to me, at least. I’ve never had the same job for this long.  In TV, there’s a lot of hopping from show to show, a new job every year, so the fact that Tony and I haven’t hopped for awhile, we’ve gotten to spend 5 years with the same characters (on screen and off), has been such a great experience.  So Yay!  

We had this conference at the end of last year, all the writers, where Shonda asked us to imagine what we wanted Season Six to look like.  We were all given the task of thinking, dreaming, imagining what we wanted for our show, our characters.  We all had to present our ideas, and because it’s Shonda, there were prizes.  For originality, for best ideas, for most interesting presentation, and because there was this sort of formal presentation-like quality to it, it became kind of scary.  But once everyone finished complaining and procrastinating and avoiding and stuff, people came up with some really amazing presentations.  There was a puppet show.  Songs were written.  There were etch-a-sketch art drawings of operations. What I decided to do for my presentation was go be a resident for a day.  So I got a trauma surgeon at County Hospital to agree to let me follow him around for 24 hours.  Oh my God, people!  I got to go into an OR.  Blood was splattered!  It was awesome!  Anyway, I’m sharing this with you to tell you that Season Six is going to be awesome.  People came up with some amazing ideas.  There was passion.  There was humor.   There was nudity!  Not really.  Actually that was a rule.  Shonda said no nudity and no live animals.  But we were all inspired and stuff.  Which was Shonda’s point.  To inspire us.  And so along the lines of inspiration… I’d like to use this blog to share with you some of the things that inspired me during the writing of this episode. If that sounds really boring to you, I apologize, I’ll try to make it interesting and, as a little prize for reading the blog, I will reveal a secret about myself at the very end.  Something I have never told a soul.  But you have to keep reading…

After Richard dropped the bomb that the hospital would be merging with Mercy West, we knew that this episode would have to deal with people’s paranoia.  Because merger means change.  And change means fear.  And the worst kind of fear is the kind that lives in your head.  The dark thoughts.  The paranoia.  The worst case scenarios that you play out that usually don’t come true.  And with Richard holing himself up inside his office, it’s just a breeding ground for rumor, fear and paranoia.  So, when we started talking about this episode, the theme of paranoia emerged pretty quickly.  And right away I thought of doing a medical story about a paranoid schizophrenic.  And my inspiration for the story of Tom and Jodie came from a kid I knew growing up named Jon.  I babysat for him.  His mom, Barbara and my mom are friends.  We went on vacations with their family.  And he grew up and became a paranoid schizophrenic.  My mom recently told me a story that when Jon (who’s now 30) needs a haircut, Barbara is unavailable all day for golf or bridge because she never knows how long it will take for Jon to find a barber shop he’s okay with.  She has to drive from barbershop to barbershop, waiting for him to get a ‘good feeling’ about one.  It might happen right away, it might take all day.  And she’s patient and kind and she just does it because she’s his mother. I was really moved when my mom told me this story because I know these people and I know how painful this has been for her but how she just handles it, with dignity and humor.  I can just picture the scene in the car as she pulls up to yet another one, “Well, Jon?”  I can totally see her trying to talk him into giving one a try.  And I can see him wanting to do it, to please her, but ultimately being too afraid and telling her they have to try another one.  I can just picture the front seat of that car, so full of love and disappointment and fear as they negotiate this very mundane thing that for them has become anything but mundane.  Then the story became what it became, with Tom choking Lexie, and falling down the stairs creating a real dilemma for Jodie.  And the idea of Bailey pricking her finger to show Tom that she’s human, she’s a mother and she’s a doctor and she’s human, that idea came from Krista, but the original inspiration was the complicated love that I’ve witnessed between these family friends.  

So we knew what our main medical story was going to be and we decided that we wanted everyone in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, techs, everyone, to be scared.  Scared to leave the hospital, scared to give up any edge.  Just scared.  No one is safe and that kind of infection running through the hospital is easy to relate to.  In the Writer’s Room there are a few of us who operate in a perpetual state of paranoia, so on the one hand it was easy to write that stuff and fun to tell funny stories about our crazy thoughts.  But here’s the thing about crazy thoughts - sometimes they aren’t crazy.  Case in point – here is an email I wrote to the writers in July telling them about a crazy, paranoid night I spent worrying about my cat -

“ Last night I woke up at 4 am and remembered that at about 2 am I had heard some weird cat meowing, like a cat dying, and I suddenly realized that our cat was dead.  I knew, just KNEW that the sound I heard was Fern being killed by a coyote.  Now, Fern spends every night outside and then at EXACTLY 5 am she appears at the porch door outside our bedroom and meows to be let in.  But last night I knew that Fern would not appear on schedule because I just knew she was dead.  Oh, because not only had I heard the weird cat meowing at 2, but there had also been some weird dog barking at about 10 pm that in my 4 am head meant a coyote had been stalking the neighborhood earlier and had settled on my house to wait patiently outside of until the perfect opportunity to kill my cat arose.  At 4 am this is what I knew had happened FOR SURE.  So what did I do?  I woke Tony and told him the cat was dead.  I went downstairs and began googling how to help your children deal with a dead pet advice.  I googled the sound that a cat being killed by a coyote makes.  I considered not telling Sally and hoping she'd never notice, I prayed, I went outside (at 4 am!) and looked for (blood?) evidence, I thought about what a perfect cat she had been.  I blamed myself for not being more vigilant about keeping the cat in at night. I let myself off the hook because I, told myself, Fern loved being outside at night and who was I to deny her her animal urges, I decided that I would tell my kids some version of "Fern lived a great life, a cat life, and as part of a cat's life there is danger, the circle of life, etc", I decided I'd tell the kids Fern got cancer and we put her to sleep, I decided we'd never get another cat. I decided we'd get 2 kittens right away.  I decided to get another dog.  And then at 5 am, on the dot … Fern came to the door outside our bedroom and meowed to be let in.”

We laughed about my craziness in the writer’s room the next day and then guess what happened a MONTH later?!!!  The cat disappeared.  For good. I don’t mean to make everyone all sad with the story of my dead cat, I’m just saying, sometimes you are just being paranoid and sometimes you aren’t, so what are you supposed to do?  Be like Lexie and live you life in that kind of heightened fearful state?  No, you have to keep going, walk the dog, eat dinner, live … you have to find a way to stop living in fear … Especially if you’re a surgeon … you need to be able to put your fear aside …

Which is why I loved the scene where Owen, Derek and Mark take Cristina, Meredith and Lexie to the baseball field.  This is one of the first times Owen has seen Cristina’s intensity.  And I love that he makes her leave the hospital, focus on something else.  That’s why he’s so good for her.  The scene was actually inspired by Shonda saying, let’s do a scene where they’re all playing baseball. But when I finally saw it, it makes me want to write more scenes like that, with our doctors outside of the hospital, little glimpses of them in real life.  One of my favorite Grey’s moments of all time was this Season One scene where Meredith and Cristina are outside jogging and they stop and they’re laying in the grass and they decide they need to cry.  And they’re like, “Now?  Should we cry right now?”  Or something like that.  Anyway, I love those little glimpses of our people as “real” people.

Back to the inspiration … Izzie’s story was very much inspired by my friend Lynn, who has cancer and runs her own company. A big concern for her while she gets treated is making sure her employees have confidence in her and don’t see her as sick or weak.  She told me that that went into her decision to get a really good wig which looks just like her hair did before chemo.  It’s to put her clients and employees at ease.  We live in Los Angeles and it gets really hot here and Lynn has said there are some days where she just looks at that wig and it’s the last thing she wants to put on, but she does.  And, like Izzie, who used this as an opportunity to ‘try being a redhead”, Lynn also got a spikey short ‘weekend’ wig to try out a more fun hairstyle.  Although, at home on the weekend, she usually goes wigless, her daughter prefers it and says she likes the peachfuzz.  

I love that scene where Alex brings Izzie her 2 pm pill and a banana and water.  She doesn’t want Alex to hover but he can’t help it, he loves her and that’s what you do for someone you love, especially when they’re trying to pretend they’re fine.  And I love it when he tells her at the end that she can’t pretend she isn’t sick, that she needs to take responsibility for her illness and he can’t be her nurse.  One thing we’ve talked about in the Writer’s Room a lot is the fact that we have these two married couples right now – Izzie and Alex,  and Meredith and Derek, who had very different weddings, for very different reasons and we really want to explore what the idea of commitment means for them this season.  

When we were writing the episode we realized that it didn’t seem right that Meredith would be paranoid, which is when we came up with the idea that because of her chaotic childhood, she gets calm in a crisis.  It’s when she’s at her best.  It’s what makes her a great doctor, makes her the glue that holds all her friends together, and it’s what Derek needs right now because whatever it is that’s going on with him and the Chief looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better …

And finally … the inspiration for the funny Cristina stuff with the kids came from my daughter, Sally. Every night when I get home she hides and I have to find her.  But whenever I get close, she yells out orders from her hiding place, “You haven’t looked in the kitchen”, “try upstairs”, and then when I finally find her, she gets upset.  She HATES being found!  And therefore I HATE HIDE AND SEEK.  

Look at that, big things are happening people, secrets are being revealed this season, even in blogs!  I’m telling you, Season Six is going to be good!