‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Fans Tune in for the Complications: IT’s A `RELATIONSHIP SHOW,’ WITH A LITTLE SURGERY MIXED IN

By Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Feb. 5–PASADENA — Early last year, Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” had a vision.

Rhimes and her cast and crew had filmed 13 episodes of the hospital drama, but the network had yet to decide when (or even if) the series would make it onto the schedule. At that point, she told one of the show’s other producers that “if this show never goes, I’ll just be selling episodes out of the trunk of my car. I could just hear me saying, ‘Want some “Grey’s Anatomy?” A little bit of “Grey’s Anatomy” over here!’ “

But Rhimes never had the chance to try out her skill at street corner sales.

“Grey’s Anatomy” became last season’s biggest surprise hit. Thrown onto ABC’s Sunday night schedule in March as a temporary replacement for “Boston Legal,” the show about the loves and relationships of interns at Seattle Grace Hospital took off with viewers almost immediately, quickly eclipsing “Legal” in the ratings.

When it returned in September, its audience jumped to 20 million and it became ABC’s most talked-about Sunday show, out-buzzing “Desperate Housewives.” Co-star Sandra Oh (“Sideways”) was nominated for an Emmy and last month won a Golden Globe for her performance. The series recently finished fourth in Television Week’s semiannual TV critics’ poll of top shows.

And tonight, it gets the viewer-rich spot behind ABC’s coverage of Super Bowl XL, a coveted showcase for any series.

“We chose it because it’s one of the best shows on television, and it’s gaining momentum,” says Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment. “It’s going to be a huge part of our future, and so we want to give it every boost we can.”

Rhimes — who hadn’t done series television until “Anatomy” — says the key to the show’s success is that it isn’t a typical hospital drama even though it includes the trappings of high-tension surgery and peculiar, hard-to-diagnose illnesses. (She bridles when it gets compared to “ER,” which she calls “that other show.”)

“We’re a relationship show with surgery in it,” says Rhimes, one of the few African-American executive producers in television. “I’ve said that before, and I’ll say it again.”

The core of “Anatomy” is a group of five interns: Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), trying to follow in the footsteps of her famous mother; overachieving, sharp-tongued Cristina Yang (Oh); Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigel), who financed medical school by being a lingerie model; lovable loser George O’Malley (T.R. Knight), who has become more lovable and less of a loser over time; and hunky Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), who is not as good a doctor as he seems at first glance.

Swirling around the group are the more established doctors at the hospital. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) is the “Nazi” who oversees the interns. Chief of surgery Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) has had a long relationship with Grey’s mother (Kate Burton). Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) and Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) are the hotshot surgeons.

The pivot point of “Anatomy” from the very first episode has been the relationship between Grey and Shepherd, often referred to as “Dr. McDreamy.” The two slept together in the show’s very first scene — she didn’t know he was a doctor — and things got really complicated at the end of Season One when his previously unmentioned wife and fellow surgeon, Addison (Kate Walsh), showed up at Seattle Grace.

Over the summer, Dempsey says, “I was despised. Old ladies at the airport would yell at me, ‘You are awful. How dare you do that to Meredith!?’ “

Meanwhile, Walsh — who was born and raised in San Jose — says Rhimes was “afraid that viewers might chase me in the streets with torches and stone me.” But Addison Shepherd, like the other characters in the show, has become so complex that Walsh says people now come up to her and say, “I really wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t. I ended up liking you.”

Rhimes says all of the characters are “a little bit like me. There’s something about the interns that’s very clearly part of my personality.

“George always does the thing you so hope you’re not going to do in public. That’s definitely me. Izzie is very sort of optimistic about everything turning out fine. That’s me on certain days. Cristina has absolutely no emotional filter and says whatever comes out of her mouth, no matter how harsh it can be. That’s me a lot of the time.”

And Meredith, Rhimes says, is “a lead character who is flawed. She’s not always nice. She doesn’t always do the perfect thing. She doesn’t always say the perfect thing. She is somebody without a home, without a family, without ties. And she’s a woman who, on many a bad day, goes to a bar, gets drunk, picks up a boy and brings him home.

“She’s a little screwed-up, and that’s what makes her interesting.”

Rhimes admits to having been so uncertain about the future of “Anatomy” that she “threw everything I knew that I wanted to happen to the characters into the first 13 episodes — and then had to start again” this season. (The current season actually will be longer than usual for dramas: 27 episodes, including four that originally were supposed to air in Season One. When the show became a hit and was renewed, ABC decided to hold the episodes until the fall.)

Trying to pry information out of Rhimes about where “Anatomy” is going and how the characters will develop is an exercise in futility. (Ditto the cast members, who are under a very strict gag order from their boss.) For example, Rhimes refuses to talk about the post-Super Bowl episode except to say (which you can tell from the promos) that it involves a code black — hospitalspeak for a bomb threat.

“One of the things I feel really strongly about is knowing what’s going to happen on an episode of television before you see it. It just seems like a waste,” she says. “To me, the show is more interesting because nobody knows what’s going to happen next.”

And Rhimes is trying to keep her distance from suggestions about how the relationships on the show should evolve.

“It’s really hard not to be influenced because people come up to you and say, ‘Why aren’t Derek and Meredith together?’ or ‘When are you going to do this or that?’ I’m really trying hard not to be influenced by all that and just stay with what the characters would do.”

‘Grey’s Anatomy’

*** 1/2

Airing: 7:15 tonight, Ch. 7

Note: Time approximate depending on when the Super Bowl ends.

Contact Charlie McCollum at cmccollum@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5245. His blog on the world of TV appears at http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

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