Notes on Pop Culture: TV Season Thus Far = Some Good, Some So-So

The fall TV season is about to go on its typical holiday break which means we’re soon going to be seeing an uptick in repeats through the new year. Grey’s Anatomy, for example, has already aired its last episode of 2011. While I’ve already extolled the virtues of the new shows Homeland and Boss here, how have other favorite TV shows being doing thus far this season?

Grey’s Anatomy: It’s had an up and down start to its eighth season. While the last episode before the holiday hiatus was solid, the softball one was the weakest episode in some time and the weeks upon weeks of Derek being a sanctimonious withholding jerk were hugely grating, never mind a gigantic turn-off. Made me despise his character. Now that we’ve learned that Meredith and Derek have lost Zola, I’m wondering what horrendous thing the writers are going to do to Meredith next as Teddy mourns her husband and Cristina likely goes into shock again, not long after she regained her emotional equilibrium after the mass shooting. (To read reviews of this season’s episodes thus far, I’ve been reviewing them over on CliqueClack TV.)

The Good Wife: This show seems as though it’s been keeping things on the down-low for a lot of the season thus far. It doesn’t seem to be taking as many chances as it has in the past and the Alicia-Will affair has, with the exception of the season premiere, been mostly under wraps, cloaked in nuanced bits of conversation in Will's glass office or aluded to in coded ways. Their relationship has not been a huge focus of Alicia's world as her attention has been split between her kids and a boatload of casework lately.

The incremental increase in the pressure the angry and jealous Peter Florrick is applying to Will in the form of an investigation into Will's actions has made for good television. Plus we don't really know if Will has been thoroughly on the up-and-up in all his business dealings. I hope the slow build will pay off, much like the big reveal about Kalinda did last season. The writers have got to know that they've raised the stakes with its stellar second second.

Seeing Eli Gold on a regular basis, now that his offices are inside Lockhart/Gardner and hearing his witty one-liners has been a wonderful addition. (The “Here. Comes. Santa.” line in the latest episode was great.) And now that Peter is getting closer to finding out for sure that Alicia and Will are sleeping together, the tension that’s been at a low boil will start to heat up.

Up All Night: I’ve also been reviewing Up All Night, the freshman Christina Applegate and Will Arnett comedy about neurotic new parents. After a bit of charming awkwardness and lack of clarity as to what role the Ava (Maya Rudolph) character should play, the show has hit its creative stride.

Its best show of the season was the latest one where Reagan and Chris had a hard time trying to get away for a romantic evening at a hotel together in order to snap their multi-week romantic dry spell. I also loved seeing Reagan’s therapist parents, Toby from The West Wing and Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom Blythe Danner. I hope they’ll return for guest spots.

Parenthood: Here’s another show that has been hot and cold thus far this season, though it’s had more quality moments than cruddy ones. The latest episode is an example of the quality that we know Parenthood writers can deliver when they want to. They provided Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) with some meaty material (it’s about damned time) involving her ex-husband Seth (played by the excellent John Corbett), and featured some thoroughly charming, achingly loving scenes between Adam and his wife Kristina who recently gave birth and who is still adjusting to the changes in her body. (I also review this show weekly here.)

What needs work? Figuring out what to do with Jasmine, Amber and Zeek who had the misfortune of having a storyline about starring in erectile dysfunction drug ads. I also hope that my concerns about where they're headed with this whole coffee cart gal adoption thing are misplaced.

Modern Family: As much as it pains me to write this, I’ve been distinctly underwhelmed by this season’s offerings from my favorite comedy, the episode above – where Phil made a string of mistakes when caring for the kids while Claire was trying to launch her bid for City Council (accidentally drugging Alex and giving Luke a shiner) – notwithstanding.

From the episode where Cam tried to pick up a woman just to prove that he could (so uncomfortable and so unfunny) and the one where Jay was acting like a grumpy old man who wouldn’t go out salsa dancing with Gloria (so tired and disappointing), to Claire getting drunk and going out with Cam and Mitchell’s friends, there have been several unfortunate misfires.

I don’t know what to make of the paucity of really strong material as of late -- the expectations are ridiculously high given their Emmy prowess --  but I’ve got my fingers crossed that the Modern Family writers get their mojo back. And soon.

Attention 'Grey's' Writers: Don't Make Meredith Grey a Victim. Again.

I expressed my frustration with the season eight premiere of Grey’s Anatomy in my review over on CliqueClack TV, “McDreamy is dead to me.” My chief complaint: That Derek Shepherd was a sanctimonious, calloused cold fish who abandoned his wife in her time of need. Again. (A few years ago, after the house of candles and Post-It “wedding,” showrunner Shonda Rhimes had promised viewers that Meredith and Derek were “together forever.” There’s apparently been a change of heart.)

The more I thought about it, the more aggravated I became about what’s happened to one of the few female lead characters in a drama. In a mere two hour span, Meredith Grey lost her job (because she’d tampered with Derek’s Alzheimer’s clinical trial in order to help a friend), saw her husband abandon her, got her job back (because the Chief, whose wife Meredith’s meddling benefited, took the fall for her) and then lost custody of her adopted daughter.

Why do the writers seem determined to grind Meredith Grey into the dirt? Let’s review what this character has endured since she graduated from law school and began her surgical internship in the shadow of her renowned surgeon mother:



She fell in love with a man who didn’t tell her that he was married. This man then dumped her, after she begged him to pick her, so he could give his marriage another try, then called Meredith a whore when she started dating and sleeping with other people.

She learned that the chief of surgery had a lengthy affair with her mother that led to the demise of her parents’ marriage.



She risked her life to extract a live bomb from a patient’s chest cavity and then watched the guy from the bomb squad (Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights) blow up, literally.

She learned that her father, Thatcher Grey, had created a brand new family and had doted on his daughters, while Meredith never saw him once he divorced her mother.



Her Alzheimer-ridden mother Ellis, who’d ignored her daughter for most of her life, told Meredith in one of her rare, final moments of lucidity that Meredith had disappointed her because she was “ordinary” and had done nothing special with her life.



She allowed herself to sink into the water after she was accidentally knocked in following a ferryboat crash. Meredith nearly drowned, just as her own mother died, hours later in Seattle Grace while Meredith was unconscious.



After she treated her stepmother in the hospital for a case of hiccups gone horribly awry and the stepmother died, her father hit Meredith in the face, later banned her from the funeral, holding her personally responsible for what happened. He later fell off the wagon and showed up at the hospital completely drunk.



Her boyfriend, who eventually left his wife Addison for Meredith, started dating other people after Meredith told him she wasn’t quite ready to commit to marriage yet but wanted to be with him. (It should be noted that Derek's demands that she commit or else he was off to date others occurred not long after the bomb squad guy had blown up, after her mother died, after Meredith nearly drowned and after her father blamed her for his wife's death and then started drinking again.)



On the day she was going to tell her “Post-It Note” husband Derek that she was pregnant, he was shot in the chest by a gunman. When her colleagues were operating on Derek and the gunman demanded that they cease operating or be shot, Meredith offered herself up to the shooter be sacrificed instead of Derek and the other doctors. One of the surgeons messed around with some wires and made it look as though Derek had died on the table so the shooter would be satisfied and leave the room. Meanwhile, Meredith crumpled to the ground in enormous grief. Meredith regained her composure once she learned Derek wasn't dead and began operating on a fellow doctor who’d been shot. Then she had a miscarriage.

Her best friend Cristina wouldn’t speak to her for some time later as she was experiencing emotional difficulties after the shooting and blamed Meredith for it.

Meredith couldn’t get pregnant again, even after fertility treatments. When she and her husband Derek got the chance to adopt a baby, an error in her professional judgment led to not only her firing, but to her husband shunning her and to them both losing custody of that baby.

If all of this had happened to me in the span of a handful of years, I'd be balled up and sitting in a dark corner someplace.

I no longer wish to see Meredith Grey, an intelligent, talented, big hearted surgeon as a victim. What’s next, have Meredith Grey get early onset Alzheimer’s like her mother? Get cancer? Become an alcoholic like her father and her father-figure (Richard Webber)? Get hit by a bus? She could go the Dr. House route and either start abusing prescription drugs and then get locked up in a mental facility or ram a car through the front of Derek’s house-in-the-making then wind up in prison. Actually, I’d prefer to see Meredith crash her car into Derek’s unfinished house because then at least she wouldn’t be the one who was victimized. At least she’d be doing something other than getting crushed and let down by the people she loves.