By Michelle Lerner

As I watched the shenanigans of the lovable moppets on GREY’S ANATOMY tonight, I kept thinking about MAD MEN. In MAD MEN, no one ever says what they mean, thinks what they say, or finishes a meaningful conversation. On GREY’S ANATOMY everyone always has the last word, even when they don’t. See that? What I just did? Pure GREY’S. What does it all mean? Well, one is a great show, and one gets huge ratings. Obviously GREY’S is the latter.

GREY’S ANATOMY is the most emotionally manipulative show on television. Forgive me if I’ve said it before, but nothing happens week to week to prove me wrong. When it first started it was an undeniably sexy show about strangers getting to know each other, intimately. Now everyone is so far into everyone else’s business that it was shocking that no one even suspected why Dr. Torres might want to kick Dr. Steven’s ass. Not that she did kick her ass. As usual, Izzy turned Dr. Torres’s simple request that they meet to talk about a private matter into a full-on schoolyard brawl. Torres was right that Izzy should be ashamed.  Her reaction to Torres was as childish as they come.

The show tries hard to plumb the depths of human emotion, but it fails. It is hard to take serious things, like adultery, serious when the show doesn’t take serious things seriously. Got that? GREY’S, like a young doctor, tries to do too much. Is the old intern, Norman- played by the marvelous Edward Hermann- supposed to be funny? Why exactly? I’m embarrassed for the writers and Mr. Hermann. He could be doing better things with his time, and acting skills, then trying to say “‘sup” like a twenty five year old. And I don’t know how the whole subplot about literally losing a patient he and Meredith wrongly told was going to die proves that Meredith is immature. But the writers seem content that just by saying so it does.


Sandra Oh, as Christina Yang, does the best work, as usual. She doesn’t like teaching. It means she has to do something other then surgery. It’s correct for her to feel this way, and to learn to get over it. And it’s somewhat subtle.

What’s not subtle is the fact that George is somehow still supposed to be the heart of the show. He used to be because he used to be uniquely innocent. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He wanted to impress the big doctors and he wanted to be liked by his cohorts. Fine. Now he’s tainted by his affair and his marriage, which was a sham from day one. He never truly stood up for Callie. It’s uncomfortable to see him still in the role of the emotional truth teller, because he’s been such a liar. When he ran after Callie, into the maudlin soaking rain, to tell her that what he did was unforgivable and the she really doesn’t forgive him, I prayed that Callie would turn around and punch him in the face. He deserves it.

I will admit that I shed a brief tear during the Chief’s niece’s plotline. How can you not be moved by the story of an eighteen-year-old girl who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at fourteen, and has had a hysterectomy and her ovaries out? And she’s still losing the battle. What’s manipulative is that the story isn’t about a brave young person fighting cancer, losing, and choosing to end her own way; it’s about the Chief’s marriage. Which is manipulative to the extreme. I could feel the Chief’s grief as he went through the argument with his estranged wife about how their niece, the closest thing they have ever had to a child as she points out, doesn’t want to live and how he couldn’t change her mind. And Adele, his wife, pulled that classic GREY’S turn about, making it about them and not her dying teenage niece. She tells him that their whole marriage he put work in front of family, and the one time she wants him to do it again, he puts family first. Well, isn’t that the right thing to do?


Did you ever date someone who could turn anything against you? Who was just so irrational that he or she could make anything rational seem irrational? That’s what GREY’S ANATOMY is like. It can make the irrational argument seem like the emotionally correct one, but only by stamping it’s foot and insisting that it’s so. It bashes you over the head with sentiment. It’s like being a teenager all over again. I wish it would grow up.