‘Grey’s Anatomy’: Gone too far?
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For a minute there it looked like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ had chosen medicine over soap, character-driven drama over silliness. When this season opened with the Chief kicking butt and taking names because Seattle Grace had lost its prestigious rating, it looked like the writers room was calling itself on its own occasional lapses into absurdity and was attempting to find footing once again in the land of grown-up television.
For a minute there, it seemed like everything would be just fine.
Now, of course, even the most dedicated ‘Grey’s’ fan has had her (there cannot be a single male fan left, can there?) faith rattled to the point of simple bone weariness. After the departure of Last Real Doctor Standing Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith), the entire hospital seems to have just given up. They might as well start serving mai tais in the OR. Thursday night’s episode may have pretended to center on which resident would get the first solo surgery, but seriously, did anyone actually care?
No, we were all too busy watching Izzie (Katherine Heigl), who we all now know, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, is not really having ‘the best sex in the history of sex’ with Denny’s ghost, she’s having it with a brain aneurysm. Which is different from a brain tumor, which showrunner Shonda Rhimes repeatedly denied for weeks. Either way, it’s clinically gross. And pure soap. Up next: Izzie’s evil twin and her possession by Satan. In fact, if rumors are correct and Heigl is indeed leaving the show (and really, Katie, now would be the time, even if you have to buy yourself out), there’s always Diedre Hall. After playing Marlena Evans for 107 years on ‘Days of Our Lives,’ Hall recently got the ax. Who better to play Izzie’s long-lost mother. She’s blond, she’s pretty, she’s a doctor (okay, a psychiatrist), and she’s certainly played 19 different flavors of crazy.
If it were only Izzie run amok, there would still be hope. But we also have the new heart-surgeon-with-Asperger’s (Mary McDonnell) rocking around critical care avoiding all eye contact and muttering naked truths — ‘your sister is dead and I’m here to harvest her organs’ — like some craven soothsayer. Meanwhile, Callie (Sarah Ramirez) has transformed, as if by secret potion, from ambivalent, taken-by-surprise mid-life bisexual into giggling, eye-batting lipstick lesbian, getting the vapors any time new gal Sadie (Melissa George) flashes her pearly whites. (Sadie being the slim and pretty object of Sapphic desire preferred by male television executives everywhere.) Sadie’s also the one who allowed Lexie (Chyler Leigh) and the other interns to take out her appendix while she was watching because that’s just the kind of ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ gal she is.
The only benefactor of all this nonsense is Meredith, who, by comparison to all this nonsense, suddenly looks like a tribal wise woman. Strangely, it wasn’t any of these Bald Character Manipulations that made me realize that there are limits, you know, even in television. No, it was when Lexie showed up at Mark Sloan’s (Eric Dane) door, presumably in the middle of the night, and began taking off her clothes saying ‘teach me, teach me’ like … actually, I don’t think that scene has precedent in modern culture, and for very good reason. The only sane viewer response was ‘click.’ (Which was not, I must admit, as dramatic a gesture as it sounds, since this was the final scene.)
‘Grey’s’ has a terrific cast that every week does its level best to create believable characters under often strange and chaotic conditions. A good show always leaves viewers with questions, but one of those questions should not be: What on earth are the writers thinking? Literally. What kind of show are they trying to create? One in which likable and sassy young people explore issues that are real enough that they resonate with thousands of viewers or a place where good actors can make steady money showcasing plotlines ridiculous enough to make the show a hot topic on blogs and chatter pages, which may, or may not, turn the heat up on the ratings?
Watching Izzie roll out of her sweaty brain-aneurysm-fueled bed of hallucinated sex to scrub in on that first solo surgery, it was hard not to think that it doesn’t really matter. Things may have simply gone too far.
-- Mary McNamara
