Last summer, I binge watched all thirteen seasons of Shonda Rhimes’ medical soap opera Grey’s Anatomy, and for my sake and the show’s, it’s time to sign that DNR, Shonda. When I started Grey’s, I didn’t understand half the medical jargon (I still don’t know what a hematoma is — I think it’s a brain bleed?) but the fast-paced dialogue and high-stake surgeries were a rush, not to mention all the hot doctor drama.
I watched about six episodes a day.
Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang’s friendship might be television’s greatest. The “you’re my person” concept warms me and when Cristina said to Meredith, “He is very dreamy but he is not the sun. You are,” I cried for an hour. As season fourteen wraps up and the show is renewed for its fifteenth season, however, I’m not sure how much more I can watch. Almost every original character is gone and there are too many new characters I keep telling to “shut-up.” The relationship between Meredith, Maggie (Meredith’s long-lost half-sister), and Amelia (sister-in-law) feels too forced and unnatural. Not enough time was spent developing their relationships, so when they suddenly say lines like “We’re sisters, that’s what sisters do,” I cringe. It’s too obvious they’re Cristina replacements.
I find myself now only watching for Alex Karev — asshole turned angelic pediatric surgeon. But even his relationship with Jo (we get it, you used to sleep in your car) turns me off. Also with the end of season fourteen also comes the end of OG characters Arizona Robbins and April Kepner, who are being written off the show, due to “creative differences.” *side-eye*
Re-watching the first few seasons of Grey’s legitimately feels like watching a different show. There was a dialogue that genuinely made you laugh, and characters whose deaths you spent hours crying over.
Now the dialogue is basically a jab at the interns who are smart enough to pass medical school yet can’t write charts without using an iPad. Viewers are also subjected to awful jokes about selfies and emojis, you know for us millennials to understand. Truthfully, there is not one relatively new character that if they died, I would care about, nevertheless cry over.
Obviously, no cast will ever compare to the original interns, Meredith, Cristina, George, Izzy, and Alex. But even when the interns from Mercy West– April and Jackson who were annoying at first too–but as they integrated into the main cast, and their characters developed, so did love for them. Now, April Kepner is one of my favorite current characters on Grey’s, of course, until she gets kicked (or killed off).
Perhaps I’m biased because all my fave characters are gone, but even when *spoiler* George, Izzy, Lexie, Mark and other regular cast members were gone, the show was still tolerable. Maybe when Cristina, and eventually Derek, finally left is when Grey’s lost its spark, and the writers had to find replacements for Meredith’s person and her husband– her two true loves since the beginning of the show.
I usually do not vouch for my favorite shows to end, but I want Grey’s to end respectfully rather than watch it deteriorate. It’s become a brain-dead patient hooked up to a ventilator. Alive because the only other option is death. All the good stuff is gone.
Know when it’s time to pull the plug.