‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Needs to Get Real
By Alan Pergament
The promos for “Grey’s Anatomy” promise that the three episodes starting tonight are going to be “extraordinary” television that is going to get everyone talking. They’d better be, or I’m checking out of the hospital series for good.
The popular ABC series, which airs at 9 tonight on WKBW-TV, is getting dumber and dumber by the minute. How bad is it? Let me count the ways.
It is about as dumb as the public and private homophobic comments made by cast member Isaiah Washington about co-worker T.R. Knight that have made national headlines and threatened the chemistry of the cast.
It is so bad that it makes me long for the second season of “Desperate Housewives.”
It has become so silly that I’m beginning to wonder if the writers of “Grey’s” have decided to copy the intentionally absurd tone of David E. Kelley’s “Boston Legal.”
Washington’s behavior has taken the spotlight away from the questionable creative choices made this season by writer-producer Shonda Rhimes. She may have “jumped the shark” — the term (based on an episode of “Happy Days”) given to a show that has passed its peak and headed downward — a couple of episodes back, when there was an epidemic of stupid wedding proposals.
First, George O’Malley (Knight), who had been depressed after his dad died, popped the question to Callie (Sara Ramirez), whom he had been treating badly for weeks because she had a quickie work affair within hours after they broke up.
Then Dr. Preston Burke (Washington) proposed to Dr. Cristana Yang (Sandra Oh), the ambitious workaholic who has alternately tried to save his career and destroy it.
These characters are supposed to be extremely intelligent people who operate on reason rather than whim and can’t possibly behave as stupidly as the writers have made them behave. Even some hopeless romantics who love the series despite its preposterous story lines may have gagged at the quickie marriage story lines.
Meanwhile, the head of the hospital, Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), has decided to give up his career to try to save his long-term marriage, only to discover his middle-aged wife has found somebody else in what many women would view as record time.
The relationship that fueled the first two seasons between Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) is going on swimmingly by comparison. The biggest issues threatening their relationship have been morning breath and snoring.
And, oh yeah, let’s not forget the flirtation between Derek’s estranged wife, Addison (Kate Walsh) and the bad-boy doctor, Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), who is studying medicine under her.
The outrageous medical story lines lately have actually been more plausible than the romances. Last week, Meredith’s mom, Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), took a brief break from Alzheimer’s to verbally abuse her daughter and hear what she wanted to hear from ex-love Dr. Webber before again succumbing to memory loss. Even if Ellis’ behavior has some medical validity, it seemed contrived and was emotionally unfulfilling.
But it wasn’t as silly as another medical case in which several surgeons opened up a patient, fainted after being exposed to her toxic blood and left her on the table until other doctors could get into the proper anti-contamination suits to try to insert her intestines back into her body before she bled to death.
I kid you not.
The intestine story line almost made George’s marriage proposal and subsequent Vegas wedding much more plausible and palatable.
Amazingly, the show’s ratings are holding up nationally. Last week, the show dominated the popular CBS crime series, “CSI,” in a head-to-head battle for the age 18-through-49 audience.
However, there have been some noticeable viewership declines locally. Last week’s toxic “Grey’s” episode had a 16.6 rating, well below the 20 ratings it was getting in the fall and lower than the 18.1 for “CSI” even though “Grey’s” had the stronger lead-in.
The diagnosis is simple. All the implausible romances have taken their toll on many local viewers who can’t imagine that doctors are as concerned with playing doctor with each other as they are in helping patients.
If the next three episodes don’t live up to the “extraordinary” hype, the recent overdose of foolish romance just may prove to be incurably toxic.
e-mail: apergament@buffnews.com
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