A 'Grey's Anatomy' goodbye (SPOILERS)
Posted: Thursday, February 22, 2007 8:00 PM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:
TV
We knew it wasn't going to be Meredith. Even though it was reported that an important "Grey's Anatomy" character was going to die, and even though Meredith spent part of last week's episode floating in chilly Elliott Bay and seeing dead people, the majority of viewers who chimed in on my earlier Weblog entry agreed that the show was not about to kill off its main character.
My pal Will over at Clicked pointed out that characters have indeed died on other shows, but my argument is that "Grey's Anatomy" is a world away from "Six Feet Under," and that Mary Alice on "Desperate Housewives" was created to be mostly a voiceover, not a character.
But the show had promised a major death, and the writers delivered, killing off not Meredith, but her Alzheimer's-stricken mother, Ellis. The episode was dramatic, in true "Grey's" style, with Meredith walking a fine line between life and death, and Denny and Dylan there to help her walk it. The scene at the end, where Izzy leaves the hospital, passing the ghost of Denny, and senses him without actually seeing him, was heartbreaking.
But the loss of Ellis feels wrong to me. It does more than just create a big dramatic loss for the main characters to deal with. Instead it takes away one of the main elements that made "Grey's" different.
Who can forget the "Grey's" pilot, and how it ended with Meredith sitting in a nursing home, visiting her quite young, but still Alzheimer's stricken mother, who didn't remember her? That moment snapped me to attention. What appeared at first to be your average who's-sleeping-with-who hospital show showed promise.
We lead such unique lives, in this world, and TV often gives us short shrift. So many adults serve as caretakers for older parents, or have had Alzheimer's or another illness touch our lives. I know it's touched mine. But that's gritty, not glamourous. That's real life, and it seldom turns up on the screen.
On the outside, Meredith looks like your typical, too-good-to-be-true character. She is beautiful, young, smart, set to make a lot of money as a doctor. On the surface, the character would seem to have everything going for her. Meeting her mother not only explained a lot about Meredith's "dark and twisty" mental state, but it made her come down to earth. She felt real, no longer like a glamorous stereotype that only scriptwriters could create.
I, for one, appreciated the recurring Ellis plotline, and thought it was for the most part handled thoughtfully. Ellis, we learned, wasn't too fond of Meredith even before she began to show Alzheimer's symptoms -- and probably should never have had children. It's not only rare to see an Alzheimer's plotline on a show like this, it's rarer still to see a mom who's indifferent about motherhood. Rare, but then again, that's what made it feel real.
I suppose that most of the press about this episode will focus on the Meredith angle, the fact that she didn't die, and that in the end, she even somewhat made up with her mother, who told her, finally, "you're anything but ordinary." But for me, the loss of Ellis took away one of the points that made "Grey's Anatomy" special.
