Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

Shonda on "Walk on Water"

Original airdate: 2/8/07

Holy crap, am I glad it is my turn to blog again!  I have missed it, let me tell you!  How is everyone?  You still out there?  Still good?

Or are you yelling and screaming at your TV sets and cursing my name for throwing Meredith into the water and then rolling the credits on you?

I don’t blame you for the cursing.  But please remember that next week, things get even more interesting and then the week after that, they get REALLY interesting.  I don’t want to talk about it.  Or give anything away….

Which means there’s not much I can blog about.  Damn it.  I can tell you that this episode (as well as the next) was directed by the famous Bossy McBossy Rob Corn.  And that before he had a script, he kept coming into my office to say in that quiet, calm voice of his: “YOU.  ARE.  KILLING.  ME.” 

See, it’s that time of year again.  That time of year when I get all sick and flu-y and my brain goes stupid and so I start to lie face down on the carpet in my office threatening to flee the country because my ability to write has clearly leaked out of my ear while I was sleeping.  Every year, like clockwork, it happens.  And every year, like clockwork, it takes me by surprise.   You’d think I’d learn.  But I don’t.  I don’t learn.

So Bossy McBossy is waiting for pages and I’m gathering my passport and calling the airports and Betsy (who sits in the office next to mine and keeps me sane) very kindly keeps coming in to remind me that I have pitched the entire 3 episode arc to her eight or nine times in vivid detail over the past five months.  All I have to do, she says (using, I might add, the exact same voice one uses with a three year old who won’t give you the sharp objects in her mouth), all I have to do is WRITE DOWN the things I have pitched her.  All I have to do PUT THEM ON PAPER.

HA!

Everyone knows the key component of serious, rampant procrastination is the inability to put anything on paper. 

Okay, I am actually procrastinating by writing about procrastinating.  On to the point, which is this:  Rob Corn worked his behind off shooting this episode with pages being fed to him as he shot and for that, I will no longer be referring to him as Bossy McBossy. Instead from this moment on, I will call him by his new tribal name: Shoots With No Script.

Now, Shoots With No Script will tell you that I had very definite ideas about this episode.  And I did.  But they were all character-based.  They were all about Meredith’s attitude and the little girl and Izzie and her tub of butter and Cristina and the notion that, in choosing to marry, she fears that she is LITERALLY being left behind in more ways than having to stay at the hospital while everyone goes to the accident site.  They were all about Derek and Burke and their conversation about “these women” and Richard and his badly dyed hair.  My thoughts were all about disappearing.

They were not about things that Shoots With A Script needed to know.  They were not, for instance, about what the ferry should look like when we first see it.  Because, if you know anything about me, you know I don’t want to think about hurting a ferry boat.  I, like McDreamy, have a thing for ferry boats.  Ferry boats are awesome and, in fact, very safe.  Ferry boats are amazing.

Ferry boats are a metaphor for Meredith, you know.

What I was interested in was Meredith and how she was doing after being hurt by her mother.   And the devastation of the ferry boat was the best way to physicalize Meredith’s pain.

The little girl?  She’s also a metaphor for Mer.  A motherless lost girl who can’t speak for herself and disappears?  Okay, that’s too obvious.  But you all know Meredith’s been doing a dance with death for some time.  Y’all know that if you’ve been watching.  She’s dark, our girl.  She’s dark and twisty.  And I worry about her.

Now, I’m really worried about her because she’s in the water and I want to be clear with you:  I don’t put people in the water for no reason.  Meredith’s got issues, she’s got serious Mommy issues and she’s broken and she’s in the water. 

I killed Denny.  I blew up Dylan.

I’m not entirely playing by the rules of TV here.

There’s a point.  And it’s coming.  Shoots With A Script and I have our fingers and toes crossed that it works.

Because what happens next…well, just wait and see…

Okay, I rambled and I procrastinated and I should just stop writing and let you go ahead and yell at me now…

The last thing I’m gonna say for now…

A lot of you wrote to protest that I didn’t talk about McVet’s statement to Mer or about McDreamy’s “I love you.”  So, here goes…

Oooh, wait!!  Can I just tell you that, last night, McDreamy told me he loved ME?  Okay, not so much McDreamy as Patrick Dempsey and not so much “me” as “working on the show” but still…my heart skipped a little beat just the same to have him utter the words in that voice of his.  That man says “I love you” better than anyone on the planet.  But he’s married.  In real life.  And on the show.  As much as we like to fantasize, we all have to remember that…

Anyway, I was proud of Finn.  I was proud of the fact that he comes over to say that he and Meredith aren’t exclusive.  He’s pissed but they’re not exclusive.  Because, honestly, he doesn’t know what happened in that exam room.  He doesn’t even know there WAS an exam room.   And he really is a good guy, a strong guy, a guy who feels something for a woman for the first time since his wife’s death.  I like that he’s not petty or easily made jealous.  I like that he’s confident enough to stick.  And I LOVE that he says that Derek is bad for her and he (Finn) is a good thing.  There is some truth to it.  Given the history of Mer/Der.  And Finn is a rescuer-guy.  You know, rescuer-guys, right?  They’re the ones who are determined to break through the scary/damaged barrier we dark and twisty girls put up.  They’re the real thing, rescuer-guys are the guys you marry.

The guys you should marry.   But then there are the Dereks of the world…

Let me say a little something about McDreamy men.  They are scary and damaged themselves.  They carry a little bit of tortured soul in them.  But they mean well.  And they’re honest.  And they’re so, so, so darn tempting.  Especially when they stand in your kitchen say “I just…I love you.  I have loved you…forever.”  How in the world are we supposed to say no to that?  We should.  We should send them packing.  But…SERIOUSLY?

And so Meredith is left with this choice.  Between what her brain knows she should do and what her heart wants her to do.  And while it seems obvious and easy, it’s absolutely not.  Finn has plans.  And Derek’s got a wife.  And there’s the choice to be healthy and mature and whole and the choice to jump off the cliff.  And no one jumps off a cliff without a parachute if they know what is good for them.   Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t have feelings for Finn.  She definitely has feelings for Finn.  And I know Derek says that he loves her but he says it about twenty episodes too late.

She stood there and said “pick me, choose me, love me.”  She begged him.  BEGGED him in the most humble, humiliating, soul-baring way possible.  And he chose Addison.  He walked away and chose Addison.

That would give any girl pause.  Major, major pause.

Meredith’s pausing.

She’s hit the pause button.

But, don’t worry, I’m not dragging this out all season.  I’m not gonna drag it out very long at all.  I like to move things forward. 

I like to take my finger off the pause button and see what happens next.

Okay, that’s all for now.  Because I have get back to writing episodes…

-Shonda

More from Shonda on the Season Premiere Episode “Time Has Come Today”…

Original Airdate: 9-22-06

(A word to our Canadian friends: you may not want to read this if you don’t want to know what happens.  I’m sorry.  I’m so so sorry that happened to you guys.  We can’t wait for you to catch up with us next week.  Also, I know many spoilers are being posted out there in web-land about next week’s episode but, you should know, we won’t be posting them here.  I can’t control what happened but I’m not gonna add to it in any way…)

So, it’s good to finally be able to TALK about the episode instead of NOT talk about the episode.  I have been dying to discuss this with you all and find out what you think.

This episode for me was really a chance to deal with the things that had been haunting me all summer.  Especially Izzie.  I’d been pretty worried about her, you see.  She was in such pain when we left her.  And let me tell you, I watched that final scene in Denny’s room where she wouldn’t get out of the bed more times than is probably normal for someone who WROTE the thing.   I couldn’t help it -- Katie Heigl’s amazing performance sucks me in every single time. 

Anyway, I was worried about Izzie.  And I knew that she was going to really be suffering when we see her again this season.  But I wasn’t sure how to make it clear that she was grieving without having a funeral.  And I really didn’t want a funeral – I see them on TV and they never have the impact that a real funeral does.  They never have that surreal, horrible sinking feeling you get when sitting at the funeral of someone you care about.  There’s a distance to a funeral with TV for me.  You sit at a funeral and you find yourself re-living all these moments in time and regretting things…

Which is why this episode is about time.  And being stuck in a moment.

So Izzie is stuck.  On the bathroom floor, unable to bring herself to move.  Because taking off that dress?  Means Denny is really gone.

George and Derek are stuck in the locker room, quarantined.  Where they end up discussing the merits of love and saying “I love you.”  George and Derek are the last two people you’d expect to connect but, here, in this situation, they do.  And I think a wonderfully unexpected parallel is drawn between George and his feelings for Callie and Derek and his feelings for Meredith.

Bailey is dealing with Omar who is stuck in a room alone, grieving for his wife.  And she’s feeling all the guilt in the world over what happened to Denny. 

Meredith is stuck at home.  Taking care of Izzie and feeling trapped by what happened with Derek.

And Addison is walking around with a pair of black panties in her purse.  Stuck with a group of teenage girls and their parents who won’t claim a newborn baby found in a trash can.

Everyone is stuck.  And everyone, EVERYONE, is plagued.  By the past. 

The flashbacks were something I’d been wanting to do for a while.  I really felt that we needed to see Addison and Derek and the moments after he discovers her in bed with his best friend Mark.  Because what Addison did to Derek is SO much worse than what happened between Meredith and Derek in that exam room at the end of the season.  I wanted us to remember that she betrayed him long before he betrayed her.  And that Addison herself is suffering over her choice to have an affair.

I also wanted very badly to reveal the first moment Meredith and Derek meet.  It is the night before the interns’ very first shift.  And if you remember the first episode of Season One, there was a mixer that night.  And there’s Meredith – with her (as George described in the pilot) “black dress, slit up the side, strappy sandals” in the bar.  And she meets Derek.  And they are so fresh with one another, it’s all so new.  There’s none of the baggage that they have now.   I just love when Meredith says “so if I know you, I’ll love you?” so SURE that she never will.  That he’s just another guy.  And when Derek asks Meredith what her story is, she says “I’m just a girl in a bar.”  And we KNOW that she’s not – we know about her mother and her daddy issues and her soft spot for sleeping with inappropriate men.  But here, she’s just a girl.  And Derek says he’s just a guy.  But, unlike the first episode of Grey’s Anatomy, we know about his wife.  And we just saw his pain at discovering Addison’s infidelity.   And this is the “split second”, the moment they meet, that has changed the course of their lives forever.

It was a conscious choice on my part to not show Burke until the end except for the flashback at the mixer.  Because I wanted you to watch the episode and either a) pine for his presence or b) forget about him – until Cristina walks into his room at the end of the day.  Then I wanted the power of what he means to Cristina to overwhelm us when he asks her how she is and then she begins to cry. 

“Don’t ever die” is one my favorite Cristina lines ever.  Look at how much she’s changed since that night at the mixer.

Richard and Ellis and Adele – the relationships are changing.  You only (purposely) get a taste of what’s to come in this episode but I think it is a potent taste.  To have Adele walk out on the Chief…what is he gonna do?

And finally, I just want to talk about Callie and her “high school with scalpels” speech:  Y’all know how much I love Callie.  And how much I love how she loves George.  It was really fun to be able to give her these words because it is what I’ve been saying is part of the premise for this show all along – these people are socially stuck in high school because they’ve been science geeks for so long. 

Okay, my brain is fried from the stress of hoping people watched the premiere so I’m going to stop writing now.   Maybe I’ll write more later after I read your thoughts.

Thank you for watching.  Thank you for checking back in with us.  I’ve gotta get back to work so you all have some more episodes to watch!!!

Shonda Rhimes on “Time Has Come Today” and other things…

Welcome to Season Three!!!

We here at Grey’s are all really excited about the new season and dear God, I hope you are too.  I personally was itching to get back to work.  I’m not a vacation kind of girl.  I’m also clearly not a girl who exists well outside the four walls of Seattle Grace Hospital.  I was missing George and the gang.   So coming back to work was all about joy.  But right now, this minute, today?  I’m also kinda nervous. 

About Thursday nights. 

I wasn’t.  I was fine.  I didn’t even feel a twinge.  Seriously (sorry for the unwarranted usage of “seriously” this early in the season).   But --- seriously.  I was feeling no pressure, no pain.  What a fun job!  I love it!  I am a stress-free, happy-go-lucky, glass half full freak of nature!  I mean, I was.  The head of ABC Steve McPherson (seriously, would it surprise you to know that I secretly call him McFee?) was all, “Shonda, we’re moving you to Thursday” and I was all, “Whoo-hoo!”  And I got really super excited.  Because Thursday?  Is a rocking night for television.  I did some dances of joy. 

Then I woke up this morning and, out of nowhere, found myself FREAKED OUT.  Because Thursdays?  Is a rocking night for television.  And McFee’s a smart man, a brilliant man, a man who has plans (very McVet of him to have plans, right?) and I trust him because…hello?  He has done pretty damn well by our show thus far.  So I trust him.  But still…do me a favor and set your VCRs and your Tivos and most important, plant your heinies in front of the TV Thursday night at 9 pm and watch.  Okay?  So I don’t burst a blood vessel in my brain from the stress?   Because I really love Mer and Der and Burktina and Iz and Alex and George and Callie and Addison and the Chief and Bailey and I’m like this worried Mama whose kid starts a new school and maybe won’t make any friends.

Enough about the freaking and the Thursdays.  Let’s discuss the thing you guys wanna know about.  Which is what’s gonna happen in the first episode.  Ready?

???

Okay, yeah, I can’t tell you anything.  Not anything in detail.  Cause that takes the fun out of watching.  But I’ve noticed that a lot of you in the comments section and over on the message boards seem to be dissecting the promos for clues.  And all I have to say is…we are going places you can’t imagine.  Or maybe you can imagine but you don’t expect.  And I want to tell you, really I do but…well, I’m trying to keep it to myself.

The first episode is going to take place pretty much where the end of Season Two left off.  Because I don’t believe in jumping ahead three months and leaving people scratching their heads and muttering, “Dude…what happened while we were away?”  I feel like SO much happened at the end of last season that I owe it to the characters to have them deal with the aftermath.  And I owe it to you to let you watch the aftermath.  Cause Denny died (yeah, I’m still not over that – I saw Jeff Dean Morgan a week ago at the DVD release party and almost burst into tears of joy and hugged him for about ten minutes because it was like Denny was back and alive and in my arms…but alas, it was just JDM who is super-cute and incredibly talented and has grown this adorably sexy scruffy stubble but is, in fact, not actually Denny anymore because Denny is dead) and Burke got shot and Meredith lost her panties…

Those panties…dude, those panties play a big part in the first couple of episodes.  Those panties are key.  Cause Meredith never put them back on.  She rushed out to deal with Izzie and left Derek who was asking “Meredith, what does this mean?” and she never had a chance to put those panties back on.   So watch for the panties – and I don’t just mean the shot in the promos that has them on the bulletin board in the hospital.

The first episode (which is called “Time Has Come Today”) deals with, not just the aftermath, but also with the past.  I encourage you to watch the original very first episode of Grey’s Anatomy from Season One because, if you pay attention to the dialogue and the details, you will be rewarded in this premiere episode with some (hopefully) very interesting tidbits.  And I hate the word “tidbits” but it does describe what I mean perfectly.  This first episode of Season Three is meant to reward hardcore fans -- it’s also meant to bring us to a place where we can say goodbye to Denny as well as deal with the Mer/Der/Finn of it all.  Just remember that nothing is ever wrapped up easily on this show.  Because things aren’t neat and clean in real life.

Here I should stop.  I shouldn’t say anything more.  Because I don’t want to tell you too much.  Cause I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Watch.

Thursday night.

9 pm (8 pm if you live in the midWest).

Watch and let me know what you think…

HEY? ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE?

Okay, okay.  I know.  I suck.  I said I was gonna blog more and I didn’t.   It’s just that I went home after 27 episodes and lay down on my sofa and then I…I…

…well…

Alright, I admit it.  I started watching TV.  Like a fiend.   I LOVE TV.  LOVE.  I’m a TV junkie.  And I never get to watch TV during the season because I’m busy making TV so I thought I’d just fire up the Tivo and watch a teeny tiny bit, just a few seconds and…and…well, I fell in.  I fell into TV world. 

I fell into this unbelievably brilliant island where this plane has crashed and there are all these people and they’re well, kinda…lost, I guess you’d say. 

Then I fell into this super funny show that is made like a documentary and all of the people work in this one place which you’d maybe call an office.

There was also this group of super secret military men and their wives and no one is supposed to talk about the fact they work in a special arena called…well, it’s a unit.

How good are these shows with only one word titles?  WOW.

But I digress.

The point is, I got sucked into OTHER shows.  Mainly in an effort to push the events over at Seattle Grace out of my mind.  I’m not over Denny’s death.  I thought I was.  I was sure I’d be fine by now.  But I’m not.  I’m just not.  I’m all freaked out.  And I’m kinda worried.  About Mer and Der.  Because, dear GOD, they had SEX!  Really good sex.  Great romantic perfect sex is what it looked like.  But he’s married.  And Addison’s all dancing at the prom and reliving the horror of Skippy Gould talking about Star Wars and poor Finn’s making all kinds of plans and…

…but Mer and Der have this all-consuming love and, I’m sorry, I did a little dance of joy when he kissed her.

Yeah, I wrote it.  But still, when I SAW it in the dailies, when I saw it ACTUALLY HAPPENING, I did a little dance.  Of joy.

But here’s a key piece of advice from me to you because there’s a difference between real life and TV and that’s this: don’t sleep with married people.  Unless they are married to you.  Because all-consuming love doesn’t come around all that often.  And, in real life, nobody does a dance of joy when they find out you’ve been engaging in adultery.  Not even me.

You think about that over the summer.  Just in case some super McDreamy approaches you on the beach and you start feeling all steamy…

Here’s a few other things to think about over the long summer break:

The Chief:  a lot of things were revealed about about the Chief.  My favorite moment is Meredith leaning forward and saying, “It was you.  You were the reason my parents broke up.”  And the Chief, all of his secrets finally spread out for everyone to see, can do nothing but leave the room.  The history of Ellis and Richard, it is long.  It is deep.  There is WAY more.  But you gotta for wait.  Watch for the clues. 

Burke’s Tremors:  yeah, they were there.  You saw them.  It was a tough choice to make, maiming a surgeon, maiming BURKE for God’s sake, but it was necessary.  What’s a hero without a few stumbles?  And you know that it’s not the fall that is so interesting.  It’s watching whether or not someone chooses to get back up and, when they, how they choose to rise.  That’s what we’ll be watching for Burke to do – get up and rise well.

George and Callie:  My George, he’s been through a lot.  He’s had sex with Meredith, had his dreams of love shattered, moved out of the house, cut his own hair and lived with Burke and Cristina.  Callie, strange and odd and dark as she is, is his chance.  His chance to be happy again.  Give the woman the benefit of the doubt.  She’s flawed and she pees in front of other people and she likes to crack bones but, guys…? She loves George.  SHE LOVES GEORGE.  That recommends her to the highest place of cool girl in my book.  Because she’s the only one who sees George for George.  Besides, I love that moment when she’s stomping down the hall, all uncomfortable in her prom dress, cursing her high heels but determined to go to the Prom.  Determined not to be that girl she was in high school.  Callie lays all her emotional crap right out in front of us, not bothering to hide or pretend she’s cynical or hip to fit in. She defiantly doesn’t fit in and her square pegness thrills me. 

The Monologues:  this was something we’d never done and I wasn’t sure would work.  But you place those pages into the hands of the actors and each and every one of them layered their characters’ souls right into the dialogue.  Those monologues – all grouped together in one act – tell us more about our characters than we have maybe learned all year.  And they speak to the heart of why Alex, Izzie, George, Cristina and Meredith are the way they are.  They also tell you how this episode is going to end.  If you were really listening, everything was there.

Okay.  I am shutting up now.  Have a good summer.  Get ready for Thursdays in the fall.

I’ll be reading your comments and answering the most frequently asked questions in the FAQ section of our website.

Thank you!

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.

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…

From Shonda Rhimes, Creator of Grey’s Anatomy…

On "Superstitions"

Original airdate: 3-19-06

So tonight’s episode was written by the brilliant Jim Parriott.  But Jim’s off helping some other television show get on its feet these days so…you’re hearing from me about this episode.

There are a lot of things I could tell you about the history of Ellis and Richard.  I spend hours, days, MONTHS thinking about these two characters.  What happened between them 20 years ago is enough to fill a whole television series all on its own.  I have a secret fond wish to write and publish The Diaries of Ellis Grey.  That woman fascinates me.  And Richard’s love for her fascinates me.  I get why they fell in love – the two of them were surgical interns at a time when most surgical interns were white males.  They were different, they were outsiders and they had each other.  Of course they fell in love.   That their love didn’t work out, that Richard failed to leave his spouse after Ellis left hers, that Ellis’ departure from Seattle Grace drove Richard to his alcoholic bottom…well, that makes for a juicy history.

What?  You were surprised about Richard’s alcoholism?  I was too.  I was sitting at home late one night with a sick kid when the writers called me with this idea.  Richard is an alcoholic.  I was all,  NO HE’S NOT!   And they pitched the idea again.  And they pitched again.  And again.  These writers of mine, they are willful and determined (especially that damned Krista Vernoff).   They wouldn’t shut up about it.  “He’s totally an alcoholic and here’s why.”  I hate them sometimes. Especially when they are right.  Because Richard is totally an alcoholic and now I see why.  Damn them.

And then there is Denny.  Denny.  Ah, Denny…

Oops.  Sorry.  I went into my fantasy world for a moment there. The fantasy world in which I am Izzie and Denny is well, Denny and he loves me with that damaged heart of his.  Do you love Denny as much as I do?  Because I LOVE Denny.  Yeah, I love the actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan and all but what I really love is Denny.  I love the sexy heart-needing dude in the hospital bed in a way that is not natural and definitely not healthy and most certainly not sane.  I love Denny with my full whole soul in a “you jump, I jump” kinda way that means there should be a restraining order in place to keep me away from him.  You can understand Alex’s rage and jealousy.  Because there is nothing he can do to compete.  In real life, the actor who plays Alex (Justin Chambers) is the sweetest, kindest, most normal family man in the world.  But the guy he plays on the show is a vicious mess.  And battling a drawling, sexy, sweet heart patient for Izzie’s affections is starting to wear on him.  All I can say is wait until you see what happens next.

The Mer/Der of it all.  They are friends.  Really.  Kind of.  Well, not so much friends.  But they think they are friends.  You should maybe take note of the fact that Derek didn’t take it so well when Meredith told him about George.  You should maybe note that he got a look on his face.  And you should remember that I said that EVERYTHING on our show comes back around again.  That’s all I’m saying.  You just remember that.

Bailey and her baby.  A lot of you wrote to rant about the fact that Bailey brings her baby to work and that babies don’t belong in hospitals.  I’d like to gently remind you that hospitals are filled with babies.  Hospitals are, in fact, where people go to push babies out into the world.  Babies start out in hospitals.  So…you know, deal with it.  Plus, the very first idea I had when Chandra Wilson (who plays Bailey) told me she was pregnant was that I’d love to see Bailey bringing her baby to work and challenging the Chief when he suggested it was inappropriate.  As a mother myself, I have a thing about that.  You want me to work?  Fine.  Great.  No problem.  But see this tiny baby right here?  This baby comes along with me.

Hmmm.  Okay, that’s all I can think of to say about this episode for tonight.  My brain is kinda empty.   See, I just went to the TV Land Awards where Grey’s Anatomy was named the Future Classic of 2006 and I’m still totally FREAKING OUT.  I mean, the entire cast of Dallas was there.  And the entire cast of Cheers.  And, I kid you not, the entire cast of GOOD TIMES.  Yes, GOOD TIMES.   Remember Janet Jackson and the iron burn on her back?  Remember when James died?   It was AWESOME.   I need to lie down and process the fact that I was in the same room as JJ.  And JR.  Do you know that 350 million people watched the episode where it was revealed who shot JR?

I have so much writing to do if I’m even going to begin to think about coming anywhere close to the universe of that kind of super amazing television history.  I should, in fact, be writing right now…

From Shonda: THE HARD TRUTH

Okay, this is the last time I’m going to post on a non-episode night.  I hate not posting because it is kind of addictive for me to write to you guys – I so love hearing what you say back.  But I like to step back and hand over the blog to the next episode’s writer and this Sunday’s episode was written by the very talented, very funny Krista Vernoff with story by Mimi Schmir (also funny and talented) and…oh, you are NOT GOING TO BELIEVE HOW GOOD THE EPISODE IS, let me tell you what happens.  It starts with…oh, yeah, the secrecy thing.

The point is, I shouldn’t be posting right now.  I have no right to be posting. 

But I had to.

Because I’ve been reading your comments.

And reading.

And reading (you guys wrote a lot of comments).

And I’m getting kind of worried about some of you.  Not all of you.  Just the really nice some of you who have sweet, kind, idealistic, optimistic, hopeful thoughts about Dylan.

Brace yourselves.  Ready?

Dylan is dead, y’all.

He’s really dead. 

He exploded. 

Into a LOT of tiny pieces. 

That stuff being washed off Meredith by Cristina and Izzie in the shower scene at the end? 

That was chunks of Dylan.

In the lexicon of dead, that makes him super-dead. 

DEAD.

May he rest in peace. 

I’m really sorry.  I really am.

From Shonda: It's the end of the episode (as we know it)

Original Airdate: 2-12-06

So Dylan’s dead. 

And I have to admit, I’m a teeny bit relieved.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Kyle Chandler.  He was great as Dylan.  Smart, funny, cute, and very much in charge.   I was, in fact, a little bit in love with Dylan.  Not as in love as I am with McDreamy or Burke but…you know, there were moments during the filming of the episodes when Dylan would be saying something bossy or helping Mer down the hall, pushing that gurney and being all bomb squad-y, moments that I was thinking, hey, maybe he doesn’t have to explode.

But still I am relieved.  Why?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Here’s why:

At the end of Act Five, there is a scene.  Scene 52.   I wrote this scene about fifteen minutes before I had to print out the script and hand it over to production.  It reads as follows:

INT. OR CORRIDOR -- CONTINUOUS

Meredith leans her head out.  Sees Dylan heading down the hall.  She's just about to open her mouth...

...When the ammo explodes.  When Dylan explodes.  Fire, shattering glass.  Meredith is thrown backwards.

Okay, that’s…what?  An eighth of a page?  A sixteenth of a page?  A tiny fraction of the script, right?

The ammo explodes.

Dylan explodes.

I wrote those words and was actually ignorant enough of the horrors to come that I gave it to the production team and then slept the sleep of babies and angels for several nights in a row.

The ammo explodes.

Dylan explodes.

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?

All of the sudden, you find yourself in meetings with real live bomb squad guys and special effects guys and a very tense director and everyone is asking you things like “When you say, bloody rain…you actually want bloody rain or just like, some blood spatter?”  And things like “When Dylan explodes, you wanna see chunks of Dylan or do you want like, a Dylan vapor?”

These are thing I don’t want to think about.  These are things that make my head hurt.   The ammo explodes.  Dylan explodes.   It’s in the script.  I wrote it.  I know that.  But I don’t want to think about Dylan chunks or bloody rain.  I don’t want to think about it at all.  I like to write things and have them happen.   I like to keep myself in a kind of stalker-ish fog in which I believe my characters aren’t characters but actual people.  It’s how I can write them.  So when you ask me about Dylan chunks, my brain gets all twisty and shuts down.  Because Dylan’s a person, a very real person to me and I love him and it’s not my fault he has to die and besides…yuck. 

But I’ve got Rob Corn on my ass.

Rob Corn doesn’t care if I try to kick everyone out of my office when they bring up bloody rain or he doesn’t care if I try to pretend I can’t speak English when someone asks me about bloody chunks.  Rob Corn is the producer on our show and it’s his job to make things happen and, if I am stupid enough to write Dylan explodes on a piece of paper, Rob Corn is damn well going to make sure that Dylan explodes.  Behind his back, I like to call Rob Corn Bossy McBossy.  It doesn’t sound affectionate here but in real life, it’s really sweet and kind.  Trust me.   Anyway, Bossy McBossy told me that we had to do tests so we could figure out how exactly Dylan explodes.

Tests?  Dylan explodes.  What’s there to test?   HA!  I’m clearly an idiot.

They built this model of Dylan’s body and one day I am herded out onto the back lot of the studio at the request of Bossy McBossy Rob Corn.   Then I have to stand and watch as 20 or 30 really happy guys (testosterone is a powerful thing) position the model of Dylan just right and explode it into tiny little pieces.  Twice.  It is very loud.   Wow.  Dylan explodes.   I’m all, “great, thanks, way to go, very manly.”  And I turn to flee, prepared to head back to my office, happy that the Dylan explodes part of this is over so I can pay attention to the other stuff, the estrogen stuff, the fun stuff like Bailey and George giving birth and Derek describing that kiss to Meredith…

…But Rob Corn raises an eyebrow and very gently says, “Uh, Shonda?” and I go really still with horror.   Because I suddenly start to realize that a) that little test was only the beginning and b) that, for the rest of my life, I was going to regret ever typing the words Dylan explodes into my computer.

They blew up test dummies.  Tall dummies, dusty dummies, dummies with helmets, dummies without helmets.  They blew up test dummies filled with fake blood.  They blew up pieces of our set.  They set off an explosion on the set of our operating rooms.  They used stunt girls and stunt guys.  Ellen let them pull her through the air.  I think there were blue screens and green screens and animated pieces of debris and glass.  The genius special effects guys added fire and smoke and things I can’t imagine but things that made it amazing.  The sound guys added over 100 layers of sound elements so that, if you have HD and you watch with surround sound speakers, the explosion flies at you and passes you and swirls around you.

Dylan explodes.

The explosion was beautiful. Amazing work and truly impressive.  I told everyone so.  I can’t believe the amount of talent and energy that come together to make this show happen.  But next time I get a Super Bowl and post-Super Bowl time slot, I’m gonna write something different.   Something a bit easier.   Something less time-consuming and expensive.  And without so many bloody chunks. 

Dylan puts the ammo down and goes to have a sandwich.   

Enough about Dylan, may he rest in peace.  I want to tell you about the difference between the first episode titled “It’s the End of the World” and the second episode “(As We Know It)”.   

I tried really hard to make the first episode very male and the second episode very female.  I wanted them to fit together, like puzzle pieces.  So that I could have two episodes about the same thing but that felt very different from one another.  The first episode is all amped up energy, all naked girls and screaming and bombs and running down hallways and men saying things like “Get out of my OR.”  The second episode is all long pauses.  Long pauses and sitting and pushing out babies and kissing in linen closets and lots of discussion about how the hell this is all going to end.  The first episode is what happens when danger strikes.  The second episode is how we deal with danger when it strikes.  The epicenter of this episode is the hallway/gurney scene.  It’s the first scene I envisioned at all when thinking of these two episodes.  I kept saying, “there needs to be this scene where Meredith and Cristina move down the hall really slowly with the ammo and Dylan and talk about boys.”  And everyone kept nodding very politely with tight smiles the way they do when they are sure you have gone off the deep end.  But Elizabeth Klaviter (she’s our super smart medical researcher) got on the phone with the bomb squad guys and the doctors and she got them to tell her how this would be possible.  How I could get that gurney rolling so Meredith and Cristina could discuss the state of Cristina’s relationship.  I needed that discussion which, for me, is really just a big old metaphor for how we deal with the tragedies in life.  You’ve got your hand on a bomb but you don’t want to talk about it over and over, you don’t want to face it – so you talk about something else.  Most of life is talking about something else.  Plus, I found this really cool song by The Greenskeepers that I was dying to use.

George is a big key to this episode.  If you pay attention, he’s the one who serves as our witness.  Through most of the episode, he wanders around, a bit bewildered.  He’s the one who feels the most helpless.  And then he has that moment with Hannah where she talks about the nature of cowardice, where she says that to do nothing is to be a coward.  And he acts.  He helps Bailey through giving birth.   In the first episode, he’s fantasizing about what it would be like to see three women in the shower.  In the second episode, he sees what three women in a shower is like in reality.  Because, guys, women don’t just climb in a shower and start soaping each other up for no reason.  Hello!?  Life isn’t porn.  Life is Meredith, bloody and battered, being gently cleaned off (chunks of Dylan) by her best friends.  And so he leaves.  Because what he is seeing is too intimate. 

The last thing I want to say about this episode has to do with Meredith.  Because all she really wants is some kind of reason to live.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about Meredith being whiny but the truth is, she’s got a mom with Alzheimer’s, no other family to speak of, and the man she loves is married.  She’s pretty freaking lonely, people.  She’s got a right to get her whine on.  So, when she falters, when she doesn’t want to pull her hand out of Mr. Carlson, it’s partly because she’s got nothing to hang on to.  As she says in the first episode, she needs a reason to go on, she needs some hope.  Which is why she has to picture Derek to get through it.  And at the end, when he shows up at her house (and he shows up just to see for himself that she is alive), she has to ask.  She has to ask him about their last kiss because if she’s ever going to get out of that bed again and keep going, she needs a reason.  She needs to know there’s someone out there for her.   She needs some hope.  And Derek (can Patrick Dempsey be any more amazing?) describes that last kiss, the last kiss they had as a happy couple, in such perfect detail that Meredith knows she’ll be okay.  Because he wouldn’t remember that kiss so well if he didn’t love her.  He couldn’t.  It’s her sign.

He loves her.  Even if he can’t be with her.  Even if he has a wife. 

He loves her, people.

I told you, there’s hope.

I can’t promise you anything because, like I said earlier, the characters are alive for me and thus, I can’t make them do anything against their will.  But my fingers and toes are crossed for the Mer/Der love…

Once again, thanks for watching the show.