'Grey's' needs a reboot
Posted: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 7:00 AM by Paige Newman
Filed Under:
TV
Now that we're in the holiday TV hiatus time, it’s a perfect time to reflect back on the season so far. Some shows have gone oh so right – the push and pull between Blair and Chuck on “Gossip Girl,” Barney’s oddball crush on Robin on “How I Met Your Mother,” Amanda and Betty as roommates on “Ugly Betty.” But other shows seem to have gone off the rails -- yes, “Grey’s Anatomy,” with the relationship between the very dead Denny and the very troubled Izzie, I’m talking to you.
It's not as if we haven’t seen ridiculous plot twists before. “Prison Break” bringing Dr. Sara Tancredi back to life after cutting her head off and having Lincoln receive it in a box “Se7en” style tops my list of head scratchers (no pun intended). TV writers, if you’re going to kill somebody, please let them stay dead (see the HBO series “Oz” for the proper way to permanently get rid of a character).
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Izzie and Denny together again ... only he's dead.
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But “Grey’s” has really sunk to a new low. Creator Shonda Rhimes spent the season denying that Katherine Heigl’s Izzie has a brain tumor (which might explain how her character could have mind-blowing sex with Denny that left her sweaty and spent) and now Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello has uncovered the real plot (don’t click unless you want a really idiotic spoiler).
My fellow editor Anna Chan put it best when she said to me last week, “I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but now I just want him to go away.” Yep, thanks, “Grey’s,” way to ruin yet another formerly great character, see also: George and Izzie.
And this isn’t the only bad plot point on “Grey’s.” There’s also the abrupt ousting of Erica Hahn (so much for getting us invested in that storyline), the interns operating on themselves and not getting kicked out of the program (really?), the insta-coupling of Cristina and Dr. Hunt (can’t they just be friends for a while), the introduction of the over-acting Mary McDonnell (who is great on “Battlestar Galactica”) as the Asperger's syndrome-suffering Dr. Dixon, and the entire lack of story for McDreamy, Bailey and Alex. It’s honestly surprising that more of these underutilized actors aren’t lining up behind
T.R. Knight to exit the show. If the economy was better, perhaps they would.
At this point the only character I can stand is Dr. Mark Sloan and after his recent sex scene with Lexie “teach me” Grey, even he is treading on thin ice.
And yet, I keep hoping things will turn around. I loved the first couple seasons of “Grey’s” and the last season of “Lost” proved that you can bring a TV series back from the dead if you give it the proverbial jolt with the paddles. Adding more characters won’t help. “Lost's” newfound success came with the creators' willingness to completely rethink the whole idea behind the show. Shonda Rhimes needs to make a New Year’s resolution to do the same.
What changes would you make to “Grey’s Anatomy”? And are there any other series that have driven you crazy this season with bizarre plot twists (“Heroes,” the revolving assistants on “Bones”)? Add your comments below.
