Grey's Anatomy: Grey Matter

BIG UPDATE!!!

ABC is kind enough to run the Super Bowl episode one more time! 

Thursday night 9:30-10:30 EST.

SET YOUR TIVOS!!!

-Shonda

EVEN more from Shonda... Thank you!

Okay….how much do I love you guys?

You really did watch.  YOU WATCHED.  Thank you.  Even to those of you who wrote to say that I’m a horrid skank and that you hated the shower scene and you hated me and the show and puppies and candy and whiskers on kittens and raindrops on roses….well, you watched too and you have a total right to your opinion so….thank you too.

I am honestly so grateful that I am posting one more time.  At first, I told myself I was posting because over 600 of you wrote back in the comments -- which is unprecendented and exciting for our little blog.  Or that I was posting again because you had so many questions.  But, truth is, I literally can not wait for you to see next week’s episode so I had to post.  And because I really am grateful.

That and the fact that I’m all worried about my fellow Tivo users who had the show cut off early because, while Tivo can do a lot, it can’t know ahead of time that the Super Bowl is gonna run long.

I heard your screams of rage and pain all the way over at my house.  Dudes, my Tivo didn’t catch the whole thing either.  And I know that I have access to a recorded version of the show that I can watch unlike everyone else in America, but what I do not have is a full Tivo-ed version of the show with all the commercials and everything.  Because I had this big old party going on with my friends and the cast and the crew and we were all so busy yelling and freaking out that we were actually on TV, that I missed all the commercials.

Truth is, I had to go hide in a corner while it aired because I was kinda overwhelmed by the whole thing.  There was a Super Bowl.  And then we aired right after it.  That is CRAZY.

Anyway, I want all you Tivo-ers and people who missed the episode to know that I am personally begging the network to re-run the episode sometime before next Sunday so that we can have it for our Tivos.  And maybe they will.  I’ll keep you posted.  Or you can make a call or send an email to the good folks at the network and suggest to them that they maybe want to run it again.  Use your nicest voices and ask really, really politely.  And don’t tell them you got the idea from me.

Also, I want you all who wrote to say “what happens next” to know that since you did not push me out your body the way my Mom did, I can’t tell you anything.  I mean, I told her.  I had to.  She made me show her the episode.  And I told my daughter who is usually in the next room whenever I’m watching the rough cuts of the show.  But she is only three years old and frankly could care less about the show except when George comes on screen.  When George comes on screen, my daughter puts down her Playdoh and yells, “That’s my friend!”   She just likes the way he looks and the sound of his voice and the fact that whenever she sees him in real life, he speaks to her in a very serious tone as if she were Diane Sawyer and not a three year old with her finger up her nose.  Which is a long way to say, I can’t tell you what happens next.

I can tell you there will be good music.  And that you should probably be prepared for some pretty big stuff to happen.  And that many people like this second part even better than the first part.

After next Sunday’s episode, I’ll try to write in more depth about the stories and the characters and why I did what I did in both episodes.  Right now, my hands are tied because until you see “(As We Know It)” – which is the title of next Sunday’s episode – I really can’t say much without giving things away.  And you know how I feel about that.

I read every last one of your posts.  I always do. So do the other writers.  We can’t tell you how much that feedback means to us.  We don’t really check message boards and we try not to pay attention to the press.  But we feel like you who post here are our core group, our friends and truth-tellers, so your words keep us going or make us think in new directions or inspire us when we are feeling as if no one is watching despite what the ratings say.

You guys kinda rock.

Kinda?

You just plain rock.

More from Shonda Rhimes on "The End Of The World..."

Episode Airdate: 2/5/06

Please tell me you watched the show.

PLEASE.

I say that because I’m gonna lie awake all night worrying that maybe you DIDN’T watch, that maybe you decided to go to bed or go out with friends or do something crazy like – I don’t know – NOT WATCH.  So please, please, please…

I’m betting many of you got to the last moment of the episode, heard Meredith whispering “what did I do, what did I do, what did I do…” and shrieked at the TV when you saw the credits.  That’s what my Mom did when I showed her the episode a week ago.  She was all, “THAT’S ALL YOU ARE GONNA SHOW ME?! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!”  And when I wouldn’t tell her, she got kind of mad and guilted me with the fact that I came out of her body.

To be fair to you, I get that you hate me right now.  I mean…I left you hanging.   But, to be fair to me, I did not know until a day into production that this was gonna be a two hour thing.  See, I made this innocent call to Channing (the coolest executive at Touchstone TV – if you meet her, buy her a free drink because she was instrumental in our show ever getting on the air) and I asked if maybe we could have an hour and a half for this episode instead of just an hour.  She said she’d make a few calls.  A few hours later, the president of the network, Steve McPherson (another extremely cool person) had me on the phone and was like, “I think two hours would be amazing.”  Now, a tip should you ever have your own TV show -- you don’t say no to the president of the network.  Frankly, I didn’t even THINK about saying no.  I mean, a chance to make the episode bigger?  A chance to do all the things I’d wanted to do with the episode but could never have done in 42 minutes (which is how long an episode is without commercials)?  That kind of chance, that kind of vote of confidence from the network for our show, our proverbial little show that could?

I said, “No problem.”  Then I hung up and hyperventilated.

Because while I knew I could do this first hour, this hour that you watched tonight, I had NO IDEA what I was going to do to fill the entire second hour.  So while director Peter Horton started shooting, I sat on the floor of my office and tried to figure out how to expand the episode without a) ruining the episode and b) expanding the episode so much that it didn’t flow.  And I did figure it out.  I think.  You’ll have to watch next week to see if you agree.

About this episode:  what I’m really proud of if that even though this episode is Grey’s Anatomy on speed, even though there’s a bomb in a body cavity, even though we had guest stars like Christina Ricci (how good was she?!) and Kyle Chandler (how cute is he?!), even though, even though, even though…it is still very much our show.  It is still more about the relationships that it is about the medicine. 

What this episode is about is birth, sex and death.  Bailey’s pregnant, Meredith’s afraid she might die and Izzie and Alex…well, they do.   Don’t knock Izzie for going for it – when life hangs in the balance, we all do what we can for comfort.   And her speech in the linen closet was one of my favorite performances of the episode.   That, and Meredith’s long speech in bed to Cristina about Addison taking her McDreamy, her McDog, her McLife.  But my favorite, favorite moment in the whole thing is the “Pink Mist” scene.  It’s one of the first times we’ve ever had a scene on GA that didn’t involve a single one of our 10 main characters.  And, as expected, Christina Ricci’s amazing but Dr. Milton…my God, we didn’t even have anyone to play the part until the very day we shot the scene and originally, he only had two lines…Dr. Milton is perfection.  My favorite line?  “Even beats.”

About the shower scene: I knew it was the Superbowl, people.  I knew a little girl-on-girl would be good with the Superbowl boys and maybe keep them watching.  I’m not stupid.  But I also wanted to do something  a) that was not gratuitous and b) that is turned on its ear in the second part that airs next week.  And Katie, Sandra and Ellen (that’s Izzie, Cristina and Meredith) were total troupers for pulling it off with such humor.  They wore sweatpants and little tube top thingies and soaped each other up for hours without a single word of complaint.  And it was cold that day.   Really cold.  It’s why I love our cast.  I write stuff and they leap.  They’re leapers.  So watch for next week’s shower scene and remember this one and know that I am shouting, “HA!  You think girl-on-girl threesomes are real?  NO WAY.  THIS is how women take care of each other.”

The Music:  a lot of you know that I pick the songs myself.  But this episode was different.  First of all, my editor Ed Ornelas and I used a lot of drums – which we’ve never done before.   The drums are the sound of Meredith’s fear.   Did you notice that the first Mer/Der scene starts with that drumbeat that sends us into a dream-like silence so you’d end up with the feeling that the moment between the two of them may or may not have happened?  Did you notice that the drums signal death?   I hope so.  Second, we had this AMAZING song by Chris Martin and Michael Stipe in our hands that we could debut on our show if we had a place for it.  And all the proceeds that came from people buying the song on iTunes would go to charity.  So that ending, that song placement was like a gift.

But there are some greater moments coming.  Please tell me you watched.  And that you’ll watch again next week.  Because honestly, aside from my daughter, I’ve never enjoyed anything more than working on this show.  It is a pleasure entertaining you. 

From Shonda Rhimes, creator and writer of upcoming post-Super Bowl episode

Episode Airdate: 2/5/06 -- After the Super Bowl!!!

So I’m all…”Pitch for the Superbowl episode?  Sure, why not…they won’t pick us...so it’s no big deal…”  I typed out a one page synopsis and sent it in to the powers-that-be at Touchstone and ABC.  Then I lay back down on the couch and promptly forgot about it.

They picked us.

Now, to understand what this meant to me, you have to understand how I write.  I don’t.  Not until the last possible minute.  Then I churn it all out in a crazed frenzy while eating ice chips and cursing the gods for not making me something sensible like an astronaut or a prima ballerina.  Prima ballerinas do not have to write things.  But I guess since they have to be freakishly thin, they may have it worse off than me.   

But I was sick.  Actually sick – not my usual drama sick.  So sick that members of the cast were peering through the door at me in my office and very kindly trying to suggest that maybe I might want to consider heading over to the nearest hospital and moving in for a while.  So sick that the medical research team did an intervention and sent one of their own in to examine.  So sick that the entire show had to be shut down for a week so that I could recover enough to not cough up pieces of my lung on my computer screen while writing.  Let me tell you: it sucked.

Now, I tell you this as a shameless ploy for sympathy.  I love sympathy as I am a neurotic writer.  And to distract you from the fact that, because I am a neurotic writer, I procrastinated and procrastinated until literally the DAY of the read-through (a read-through is when we gather together the entire cast and they do us the honor of reading the script out loud at a big round table – even after a season and a half, it is amazing to me that I get to hear my words read aloud by these truly talented people).  At which point, I started writing like a crazed fiend.  I finished writing the script just in time for my team to make copies of the script and race them over to put them into the cast’s hands as they were taking their seats at the big round table.  None of us, including me, had any idea if what I’d written would even work.   I was nervous and wishing I was still sick.  Because you never know.  I love my actors and my actors like me well enough.  But still…

Perhaps they would chase me with torches and stone me to death with rage at my idiocy.  Perhaps they’d smile politely but coldly at me and run to call their agents so that they could beg to get off this show.  Or, you know, perhaps they would raise me on their shoulders and carry me around singing showtunes in my honor.

They did nothing of the sort.  What they did do was gasp, yell, hoot with laughter, applaud and openly weep as they read the pages aloud.   Ellen Pompeo shrieked “HOLY CRAP!” right in the middle of the reading.  Katie Heigl started to cry somewhere around page 20.  Sandra Oh just kept whispering “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh, oh, OH MY GOSH.”  And after I got hugs.  I am not the hugging kind but still…if you stand very still and hug back, it is nice.  The director, Peter Horton, was thrilled.  The writers were thrilled.  The studio and the network were thrilled.

Thrilled.  It’s good, that word.  Thrilled.

So please watch.

I hope you like it.  A lot of work by the cast and crew went into this episode.  Work I’ll be able to explain to you after the episode airs and it stops being the big giant secret episode that we don’t talk about…

From Shonda Rhimes, creator and writer of "Thanks For The Memories"

Episode Airdate: 11/20/05

So, Thanksgiving.

Writing this episode was a bit of an exercise in torture for me. Don’t get me wrong – it was fun. It’s always fun. But for the first time, the majority of our interns are outside the hospital. Which meant figuring out a way to have medical cases without having “medical cases”. How was I going to have patients? You need patients on a medical show. That’s why they call it a medical show. So I sulked. Then I lay on the floor of my office for a while and thought about running away to Italy. Then I opened my office door and told everyone that I would never write again and that my career was over. Then I ate a lot of candy. And then I came up with an idea. Enter…the turkeys.

I like to call them Turkey One and Turkey Two.

Turkey One is the bird that Burke and Izzie spend the day cooking. Did you watch the pilot episode? If you did, then you know that Burke talks George through an appendectomy. It's a pivotal scene for me, as it was the very first scene I envisioned when creating this show –- it’s essentially what started the show, the idea of one poor surgeon being labeled as “007.” That scene is called back, almost word for word, in the Thanksgiving episode. Joe and Walter bet on Izzie’s moves, Burke yells “Suction!” and, for the first time on our show, we play a song that we’ve already used before. Yep, it’s the same song from the pilot episode (a great tune by The O.A.O.T’s). What made me happy about Turkey One was that it gave us an opportunity to explore a relationship that had never really been explored on our show – Burke and Izzie. In writing the episode, I discovered how much of a gentleman Burke really is. Out of kindness, he takes over this potential turkey-making disaster and finds a way to bond with Izzie. Which tells us a couple of things about him:

1.) that he can make himself at home anywhere

and

2.) that he is in love with Cristina.

Because why else would he do what he does on Thanksgiving? He loves her, pure and simple. And no one can tell me otherwise. I do wonder if they’ll make it as a couple. Because, I gotta tell you, it killed me to write that Cristina would rather spend the day in the operating room than with Burke. But it was the truth and I had no choice. Just like I had no choice but to let Derek choose Addison. People will tell you I had a choice but I didn’t. Really. I promise. I’m sorry. The characters made me do it! I’M SORRY ALREADY!

Ahem.

On to Turkey Two. Turkey Two is the turkey that George is forced to hunt with family. I really wanted to show more family stuff in this episode because we all have families and, while we all love our families, much of the holiday time spent with our families is ruined by a lot of crap we should have gotten over when we were kids but did not. For George, that’s the idea that he’s always felt like an outsider. You can see George as a kid, can’t you? He’s the one reading a book while his brothers and Dad are watching monster truck rallies. He’s the one winning challenges with the Mathletes while his brothers are lettering in football. George is the runt of the litter and the runt of the litter always ends up feeling like the outsider. What was most important to me, though, was showing the flip side of George’s hostility. As much of an outsider as he is in their life, they are in his life. Which is what made the “Pick a Car” speech his Dad gives so nice, I think. They don’t know how to talk to him, they know he thinks they're stupid, they know he’s in a world they’ll never be in. But they try. So why can’t he? I love seeing this side of George. So much of his personality is explained in this episode. He’s a science geek raised in a family of hunting, shooting, car-talking men’s men. How could he turn out any other way? I love the moment where George is loading the truck at high speed and he takes a moment to laugh with his celebrating brothers. Because the moment his brothers turn away, George’s face turns deadly serious. He wants out of there in the worst kind of way. This is pure misery for him on a real level. Kinda makes you almost sorry you laughed at his syphilis. Almost. But not quite.

Let’s talk about Alex. He played a small but pivotal part in this episode. I like to create moments for him and Meredith. Because, in my head, they are very similar people. Even though Alex can be such an ass, even though he’s arrogant, even though he gave George the Syph. He and Meredith are both lost, both lonely, both former screw-ups who got their acts together. In another lifetime, they would be really good friends. So throughout the season, we watch them pause from time to time to look at each other and see that they are mirrors of one another.

In a lot of ways, this is really Bailey’s episode. I came up with this story line because, every once in a while, someone will meet me and underestimate me. I’m fairly round, I wear a lot of pink, I tend to forget how to talk when I’m nervous – people tend to ignore me. Which, let me tell you, pisses me off. And I thought about how that must happen to someone like Bailey all the time. She’s short, she’s cuddly cute and she doesn’t say much to strangers – she doesn’t look like you’d assume a hot shot “Nazi” surgeon would look. So the fact that this guy would assume the Nazi is a man, that Bailey might be stupid, that he can talk to her like she’s an intern…well, let the fireworks begin. What I love is that Bailey (who always lets people have it – here in the writers’ building, we call them “Bailey’s Arias”) never lets this guy have it. All she says is “Happy Thanksgiving”. And that’s more biting than any aria she could deliver.

And, oh yes, the Mer/Der of it all. I love this couple. LOVE. LOOOOOOVE. I love watching them together, I love imagining what they will say to one another, I love watching McDreamy be McDreamier than I ever McDreamed he could be. LOVE. So it’s been a little hard on me what with him choosing Addison and leaving Meredith behind. I have been suffering. (Yeah, yeah, I know it was my idea but still…can I not hurt?) What I needed was a bit of closure. A bit of a sense that Meredith was gonna be okay. And a sense that Derek would never be the same for having lost her. So, to get all metaphorical, Holden -- the sleeping patient -- is Meredith. She’s the one who woke up to find that everyone has moved on without her. She’s the one trying to figure out how to get through this. There’s that moment at the end where she tells Derek that it is good that he’s trying, that if he didn’t try, he wouldn’t be the guy she fell in love with. And she’s got these glittering tears in her eyes. She’s dying inside but she’s right. If he didn’t try to make his marriage work, he wouldn’t be McDreamy. I tried to find a way around that but that’s a fact. McDreamy would try. McDreamy would do everything he could. But she also asks Derek if he loves Addison. And Derek says “I don’t know.” Which gives us a little bit of hope. You hear that? We have a bit of hope. Okay, not hope for next week’s episode because I saw in the promos that Meredith might be kissing someone else but eventually…all my fingers and toes are crossed. Keep hope alive.

About Addison…Maybe you can try to feel a little sorry for her? See how hard she’s trying? See how much she’s suffering for her mistake? Give the woman a chance. She didn’t mean to show up and bust up our Mer/Der love. Okay, maybe she did but still…she’s a good person. And she’s no longer wearing the salmon colored scrubs.

Last thing: our bartender, Joe. Joe is gay. Now, I knew Joe was gay this whole time. I’ve known Joe was gay since I wrote his first lines. Joe has always been gay. What I wanted to do was let Joe be gay without it being a “thing”. Without having a very special coming out episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I hate "very special" episodes of things. So instead of being very special, I made it as “unspecial” as possible. Here’s Joe, here’s Joe’s boyfriend. Whatever. Moving on. It’s one piece of who Joe is as a person. There are more pieces. You’ll learn about them. In time.

Okay, I’ve rambled on and on and on. Go eat your turkey. Go be with your families and friends. Thank you for watching the show.

And Happy Thanksgiving.

From Shonda Rhimes, creator, Executive Producer and writer of "Bring the Pain"

Originally posted on 10/23/05

When I was searching for a title for this episode (all of our show titles are derived from songs with the exception of the 7th episode of Season One - I have a thing for music, if you haven't noticed already), I was looking for a song title that spoke to the theme of the episode, which is pain management. Oddly enough, there are a lot of songs titled "Bring the Pain." But the song I chose - the song the episode is named for - is Bring the Pain by the Wu-Tang Clan. Just in case you wondered.

"Bring the Pain" was originally conceived, written and shot to be the finale of Grey's Anatomy's first season. But then we aired after "Desperate Housewives" and, well…everything changed. Ratings, timeslots, a really great audience following…it was mind blowing and humbling for all of us. The network made a decision -- our first season needed to end in conjunction with DH's season. And so suddenly, the arrival of Derek's wife became our perfect season-ending cliffhanger. And this episode became one of a series of big episodes to launch our second season.

But if you watch it with that in mind - the fact that this was the final episode - you can see me trying to bring the characters full circle from the pilot. Meredith began the show throwing Derek out of her house after a one night stand. In this episode, she's admitting that she loves him. Saying "pick me, choose me, love me" in a desperate attempt to keep Derek by her side. George started out the pilot as "007" - he's the guy who can't get through an appendectomy without choking and humiliating himself in front of Dr. Burke. In "Bring the Pain", George earns his manhood by performing heart surgery in an elevator. And Alex is back to being humiliated - just as he was in the first episode. Cristina, the girl who can't connect with anyone, forms an odd, twisted bond with Porn Guy and then truly connects with Burke. Izzie, so vulnerable and underestimated when we first meet her, is the girl who removes her heart from her sleeve in "Bring the Pain". And, Bailey, the tough "Nazi", shows her softer side - we learn the first bits of information about her personal life. Plus, the word "seriously" - the most overused word on our show - is purposely uttered a zillion times.

I also really wanted to use this episode to give McDreamy a chance to explain why he's waited so long to sign those divorce papers. Here's the thing: Meredith may not understand why he's waited but Derek is a married man and he's a good guy - so he can't sign those papers without really thinking about it first. That was important. In order for McDreamy to be McDreamy, he has to be the kind of man who takes the end of his marriage seriously.

In the end, however, what this episode is about most - what all our episodes are about most - is friendship. The interns form this odd, dysfunctional family with one another to get them through each day. That's when I think the show is working at its best - when our interns are lying in bed together complaining about their lives, when they sit at the bar together complaining about their lives, when they stand around the nurses' station complaining about their lives. Complaining to people who understand is key to friendship, I think.

And so, in the end, when Meredith is sitting at that bar, waiting and hoping for Derek to show up, the other interns are there. Waiting and hoping right along with her...