Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: 'Grey's' Mixed Notes, Ferraro's Passing Ignored, Paging Mr. Darcy

Grey's Mixed Notes

So, about that Grey's Anatomy major music extravaganza . . . it received largely mixed reviews, like the mixed review I gave it the morning after it aired.

The scene above -- in which Callie was supposedly imagining all the Grey's couples gettin' flirty and sexy -- is an example of how this episode, which started out very powerfully (so much so that I was teary-eyed), went horribly awry. While Callie and her unborn baby were in life threatening situations and Meredith was severely depressed about her inability to have her own baby, she would NOT be singing gloriously about "running on sunshine" with a crazy-big smile on her face while kissing Derek I'm sorry. This scene was preposterous.

However my review wasn't all negative:

"Sara Ramirez, who plays Callie, sang the hell out of this episode. She has a lovely voice. She energetically emoted. She underplayed it when the song called for quiet grace. And that opening scene where Callie was having an out-of-body experience and singing as she was brought to Seattle Grace and wheeled into the OR for the first time, that was mighty powerful.

Chyler Leigh (Lexie) and Chandra Wilson (Bailey) also sang exceptionally well throughout."

Otherwise . . . too. Much. Singing.

Media Coverage: Ferraro vs Taylor

Following on the heels of last week’s post about the disparity of the media coverage allotted to the deaths of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor and political trailblazer Geraldine Ferraro, I wrote a column which contains some hard numbers to back up my assertion that Taylor received loads more news coverage than did the first woman vice presidential nominee for a major political party, someone who the likes of Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright said was a role model for them.


The most dispiriting part of the piece was this quote that I found from a National Journal writer who, after comparing the  media attention these two women received after their deaths, surmised, “. . . [A]s the media space afforded Elizabeth Taylor’s and Ferraro’s obituaries attested . . . society still values female sex symbols more than female leaders.”

Paging Mr. Darcy

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I've never read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I know, shocking, isn't it?

But seeing as though I've been on a classics binge lately -- A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre -- I started Pride and Prejudice over the weekend and am bringing with me high hopes that this classic will deeply impress me. I hope I won't be disappointed.

In the meantime, as far as my pet project of reading the entire, seven-book Harry Potter series aloud to my youngest son, I've started writing about the Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project on my lifestyle/parenting blog. Thus far, between myself and my husband, we've read 2,750 pages to our now-9-year-old son and just concluded Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

To keep tabs on our reading progress, I made a special blog page where I list on what page we left off and what was going on when we closed the book. We've just started the beginning of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and are still on the part where the U.K. Prime Minister is having a disturbing conversation with the Minister of Magic.

Image credit: Amazon.com.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Grey's' Pulls An 'Alias' & Ferrell Goes to 'The Office'

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy*

Grey’s Pulls An Alias

If you saw the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy, you were no doubt surprised by its final scene, which set up next week’s special “musical” edition of Grey’s slated to feature cast members singing songs which have previously been featured on the ABC drama including The Fray’s “How to Save a Life,” a tune made popular by the show.

I was none too pleased to see what happened in that final scene shortly after Arizona, who spent the episode being bitterly jealous of baby daddy Mark, proposed marriage to Callie on their way to a weekend away together: An Alias-like car crash. During the final moment of the fourth season of the spy drama, pregnant Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn had been discussing marriage while driving to a romantic, weekend getaway when they too got into a surprise car crash, although they were intentionally struck by someone as opposed to in Grey’s where Arizona accidentally smashed into a truck in front of them. (I reviewed the episode for CliqueClack TV.)

That being said, I’m very curious as to how this musically themed episode, slated for March 31, is going to play out. Will it be god awful or kind of cool?

ABC has released the first few minutes of that new episode. Warning: The video, courtesy of TV Fanatic, is graphic.