'Grey's Anatomy' crossing into 'ER' territory?
Posted: Friday, February 16, 2007 9:50 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
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TV
Stop reading here if you haven't yet watched Thursday night's "Grey's Anatomy" episode, the second of a three-episode arc about a ferry accident. (Need a summary? Our chart is here.)
If you've seen it, you know that Meredith spends a lot of the episode floating around in the chilly waters of Puget Sound (Elliott Bay, to be specific). Of course she's saved by no one other than her boyfriend, hunky Dr. McDreamy, and in that scene she's about as ghostly white as can be.
By the end of the show, she's back at Seattle Grace, flatlining despite the best efforts of her co-workers. She jerks awake only to see Denny Duquette and Dylan, the blown-up bomb squad guy. Like the little kid in "The Sixth Sense," she's seeing dead people, and they assure her she's dead, too.
Experienced TV watchers know there's no way Meredith can be dead, just like there was no way she could be left to drift in the Sound, or no way she could have been found by an anonymous rescue squadder -- she had to be found by her McDreamy, and the title character in a hit show does not die. (What's that they sang in the "Sunset Boulevard" musical? "Nobody dies except the best friend...")
But with that said, what is going on with "Grey's" these days? Does the show want to become "ER," with a Crisis Of The Week every single week, making each hour-long episode into a Big Drama with a ferry on fire, a bomb inside a patient, a toxic mix of meds in the hospital? Because that's exactly what drove me away from "ER," and I can see it happening again here.
"Grey's" is set in a hospital, sure, and handles its day-in, day-out hospital plots well. But in the bigger picture, the patients are just artful window dressing for a nighttime soap about the loves and losses of a bunch of really attractive doctors.
Here's the analogy I keep coming back to: If you've ever acted, you know that the makeup artists have to just glob a ton of makeup onto your face before you go out on stage. It's much, much more than you would ever wear out on the street, because the camera needs that overkill.
It's as if the scriptwriters on "Grey's" are thinking the same way: We've got to add more, more, more BIG events, bombs, explosions, fires, or we'll lose the audience. The problem is, there are a million places on TV to go for flames and blood, not to mention about a thousand movies in the theaters eager to offer the same thing. Not as many of those other shows offer the intriguing net of relationships "Grey's" has drawn.
Focusing on the personal, rather than the patients, set "Grey's Anatomy" apart from the beginning and helped make it a hit. The show should stick to its strengths and dial back on the danger.
