About that 'Grey's' Finale . . .

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the Grey’s Anatomy season finale.*

Have you come down from that intense, highly caffeinated Grey’s Anatomy season six finale yet? Seriously.

The blood bath, the deaths, the tension. For two freakin’ hours. That’s not what I need to watch right before I going to bed.

Grey's, Grey's, Grey's

*Warning: Spoilers for the next season of Grey's Anatomy ahead*

Let's dissect some of the recent news with regard to Grey's Anatomy, shall we?

T.R. Knight spoke out to Entertainment Weekly magazine, saying that, given how little screen time his character George O'Malley got last season as compared to Sandra Oh's Cristina Yang (48 minutes versus 114 minutes), he figured there was little point in discussing with the show's creator/producer Shonda Rhimes about getting George more time.

"His surprising decision came after George's screen time was greatly diminished last fall," EW reported. "But what's even more surprising is that when it happened, Knight chose not to ask exec producer Shonda Rhimes what was going on with his character. Instead, he simply asked to leave. 'My five-year experience proved to me that I could not trust any answer that was given [about George],' he explains."

While EW speculated that bad blood had been brewing between Knight and Rhimes over the handling of the incident with former Grey's colleague Isaiah Washington (who reportedly twice invoked a homophobic slur in reference to Knight), Knight said, "The danger of going back is you're trying to pin blame on somebody, and to still be rehashing that three years later would be the ultimate craziness. I have nothing to gain by vilifying anyone."

The magazine portrayed some of his colleagues, in middle of filming the aftermath of George's death-by-bus scenes, as melancholy. E! (with the exclamation point!) reported that the cast was spotted shooting George's funeral scene.

Rhimes told EW that she'd originally planned on having Knight appear briefly in the new season, in the form of flashbacks, in order to show what actually happened to him on the day he died, including depicting him as heroically saving the woman from the bus, but that he declined saying he liked his departure next to the hospital elevator next to the gowned Izzie as is.

In other Grey's developments, EW quoted Rhimes as saying that the character Meredith Grey will not be pregnant in the show, as actress Ellen Pompeo is in real life. Pompeo will be taking a maternity leave in the fall, hence Meredith Grey will disappear from the show for a while.

This news had TV Squad's Michael Pascua speculating on what that would mean for Grey's. "Season six Grey's Anatomy is is going to be odd," he said. ". . . I understand that the title to Grey's Anatomy is a pun on the medical book, but if there isn't any actual Grey on the show then it should be spun into Yang's Anatomy or any of the other characters' last names. Would you still watch Grey's Anatomy if Meredith was gone and Lexie took her place?"

What do you think about the confirmed George death? About Meredith disappearing for a while? Think it'll be, as Pascua said, an "odd" season?

Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.

'Grey's' Finale: A Mixed Bag of Touching Sweetness and Manipulation

*Warning: Spoilers from the Grey's Anatomy finale*

I wanted to wait a few days before I wrote something about the Grey's Anatomy season five finale because my initial reaction to the last few minutes of it was negative, very negative. Made me feel manipulated. I was ticked off.

Thus I decided to chill for a few days, put a little distance between me and the finale so I could think about it and blog after my shock had worn off. But I remain annoyed, not by the bulk of the two hours, though, which featured wonderful scenes including Paris Gellar and Matt Saracen as inspiring patients, the beautifully complicated Cristina and Owen love story, the blue Post-It Note wedding with the simple yet moving vows ("No running away." "To take care when old, senile, smelly." "This is forever."), the agonizing thought process that went into deciding whether Izzie should have the brain surgery and then her signing the DNR, the reaction of the staff to the notion of George serving in the Army (particularly Arizona's backstory about the importance of Army trauma surgeons). I'm simply annoyed with the conclusion and it's coloring my reaction to the entire finale.

Grey's fans of course knew that Katherine Heigl, who plays Izzie, and T.R. Knight, who plays George O'Malley, have had creative and professional disagreements with the show's execs/producers/writers for some time. Heigl complained that she wasn't given meaty material last season and made noise like she wanted to leave the show. Knight, according to news reports, wanted out of his contract because his character's storylines had all but disappeared. Given all of that, I couldn't help but feel as though the season finale was more about the off-camera antics than the natural, creative flow of the ABC drama.

Yes, I could see it as plausible that Izzie could die from her cancer and her risky surgery. That makes sense, no matter how upsetting it was to see Alex clutching her in his arms as she started coding. But deciding to have George hit by a bus and mangled beyond recognition? While it's true he was heroic ("a hard-core hero" as Meredith said) and that he saved a woman's life in the process, but the symbolism of being hit by a bus seemed like payback to Knight. And to have BOTH Izzie and George code simultaneously, and then feature Izzie in the same prom dress she donned when she was boarding the elevator to visit her fiance Denny who, unbenownst to her, had just died . . . this was all way too much for one finale, for five minutes of TV.

I'm not alone in being unhappy with Grey's final minutes. Here's a sample of different folks' responses to the finale, in which the fate of Izzie Stevens AND George O'Malley were left in limbo (Are they both gone? I'm not convinced.):

New York Magazine's Emma Rosenblum, in a post whose headline called the finale "A Betrayal," wrote:

"T.R. Knight's George . . . got little to no screen time this season until the finale, where he signs up for the Army and is promptly hit by a bus. This plotline really disappoints: [Show Creator] Shonda Rhimes claimed this episode would be true to the characters, but if you're familiar with George's five-season arc, his Army enlistment seems mighty suspect. He had just started his hard-won residency at Seattle Grace after failing his boards the first time around, so why would he leave now? And then he gets hit by a bus. The only believable thing? No one notices George's absence (since he was never around this season). The five minutes from when Meredith finally realizes that the no-faced man is George to when he shows up, ghost-like, in an Army uniform, is certainly not enough time to ready our tear ducts for the final farewell. No weepy goodbyes? No musical montages?"

The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik wrote:

". . . [T]he ending for O'Malley feels excessive to me. There was . . . an expectation that T.R. Knight, the actor who played O'Malley, would be leaving the series as well, but they deftly wrote him out in Thursday's finale by sending him off to Iraq as a military combat trauma surgeon.

Was it surprising when he appeared to be the victim of a fatal traffic accident -- hit by a bus after saving a woman by pushing her out of the way of it? Yes, it was surprising. And while I suspect some will say it was a cleverly done ironic twist and even a comment on the battlefields that America's streets have become, to me it was mostly about shock value.

And while some longtime fans are arguing that there is wiggle room for the two 'dead' to return, I believe that is mostly a matter of denial on the part of those fans. But even if they are right, it is only further of evidence of the ways viewers' feelings are abused by the producers. If either of these two characters show up in any form next year -- even as ghosts -- I am going to wail away for days on this blog about the cheap and low-down way the show exploits its fans."

The web site Double X called what happened a broken contract with the loyal viewers:

". . . George's death was a big ol' eff you to the actor and to the audience. Last night George, who has been noticeably and woefully underused all season, enlisted in the Army as a trauma surgeon, which would have been a perfectly acceptable, if totally lackluster way to send him off. But getting shot at in Iraq was too good a fate for George, who instead became 'roadkill' (as one of his doctors put it) after pushing a stranger out of the way of a bus. His friends only realized it was him underneath all the swollen damage a few seconds before he coded.

George is a character Shonda Rhimes has spent five years making us care about — and she didn't even give him his own death scene. Instead he got a brutal, shocking, expedient death he had to share with the show's real star (Izzie). His violent end wasn't necessary to the plot, the character, or the story. It was just some grizzly afterthought."

However the Los Angeles Times' Mary McNamara said she thinks that the ending is indicative that Grey's Anatomy's future might on the uptick, creatively speaking after what she saw as an underwhelming season:

"All I have to say is: They better both be dead.

Grey's Anatomy limped to its season finale . . . with a two-hour episode that looked very much like one-hour episodes pushed together as we all waited in less than breathless anticipation to see if the endless and increasingly monotonous rumors were true and both T.R. Knight . . . and Katherine Heigl were leaving the show.

. . . For a moment, it seemed Knight would be deprived of even a picturesque death scene -- Izzie collapsed in Alex's arms (causing even the jaded TV critic who saw it coming to sob mildly) but George, of course, had no face. But creator Shonda Rhimes is anything but heartless and so we followed both into the Afterlife, which turns out to be an elevator, where Izzie in her prom dress met George in his dress uniform (which actually he cannot have actually received yet but whatever). The two looked at each other enigmatically and lovingly."

As if you need reminding, below is a clip of the last five minutes that everyone's STILL talking about:



What did you think of the finale? Do you think the touchingly poignant moments outweighed the shock and the uncertainty of the fates of Izzie and George?

Image credit: ABC.

TV Squad Puts 'Grey's' In the Crosshairs

TV Squad (full disclosure: for which I used to blog) has a new list out. They love lists. This time, the web site puts 10 shows in the crosshairs and targets them for cancellation. Topping TV Squad's "Series That Should be Canceled" is Grey's Anatomy, writing: "I cannot take one more minute of Meredith whining. I've reached my limit." (See why I DON'T think Meredith is a whiner and why I root for her character, here.)

Included among the other programs that TV Squad targets are: Survivor, American Idol, Brothers & Sisters, a CSI, a Law & Order and Private Practice (lots of hating on Shonda Rhimes here, although the Violet-being-held-captive-for-unwilling-C-section scenes in the season finale were patently insane, plus her refusal to test for whose baby she was carrying was annoying to no end).

I must, however, disagree with the list, at least as far as Grey's goes . . . as long as the remainder of the Grey's season doesn't go whole-hog dead Denny-ish wacko on me. If that happens, I may find myself concurring with TV Squad, but not because Meredith's a "whiner."

Is there any TV series which you wish would just be put out of its misery?

Image credit: ABC.

'Desperate' Mondays: Rose's Turn

Maybe it's because I was spoiled by three consecutive days of thrilling baseball in the form of the Boston Red Sox kicking the New York Yankees' collective behinds. Ground rule doubles. Fastballs at 99 mph. A grand slam. STEALING HOME PLATE. What's better than that?

Maybe it's because HBO's In Treatment (which I'm going to write about in a separate blog item) is so gripping and exquisite, even when you're watching nothing but people talking.

Maybe it's because many other TV shows have been so good lately, such as Lost, Rescue Me, House, The Office, experiencing a rebirth of sorts with Michael's upstart company. (I'm currently irritated that Grey's Anatomy has become a showcase for dead and dying kid scenes. Seriously, as the mom of young kids, I can't take these kinds of scenes each week. I'm begging ya Shonda, please have Dr. Bailey get out of pediatrics, NOW!)

Whatever the cause, I do know that I've lost my Desperate Housewives' mojo. I've been writing about the show on this blog after each new episode but have been rapidly losing interest, despite the fact that the show's continuing to get good ratings. I, personally, don't find it a "must-see" anymore. Stories are becoming repetitive, characters too predictable.

How many times is Bree going to be betrayed by her husband/lover? (Rex cheated. The creepy pharmacist guy wooed Bree after killing Rex. Orson swooped in, knowing full well he'd already tried to kill Bree's neighbor Mike. I could go on and on here. Bree's unlucky in love. We've got it. But how many times are we going to see her go to war with the man who she once loved?)

How many episodes are going to feature the theme that people routinely hide things from one another? (Wasn't that the theme of the pilot episode, that Mary Alice was hiding her pain when her life looked pristine and perfect from the outside just before she committed suicide? Katherine "confessing" that she was hiding her desire for Mike to commit to her? Duh. Of course she'd want commitment. It would be out of character for her not to.)

How many times are we going to witness one spouse get jealous of another? (Tom getting upset that Lynette took a shower at the office? Like Lynette's really going to cheat on him with Carlos. Tom is feeling emasculated -- AGAIN -- because Lynette is working and comes home tired and uninterested in sex. Tom's looking to validate himself, make himself feel better. Why not have him buy a midlife crisis-mobile. Oh, wait. Already did that. How about have him join a rock band? Did that too. Flirt with a horny neighborhood housewife? Now he can check that off his list.)

Bah!

So now, if the heavy-handed foreshadowing at the end of this episode goes where I think it's going to go, we're going to see nutty, lying Dave try to kill Susan and Mike's son in order to pay Susan back for accidentally killing Dave's first wife and child? An injured or dead/dying kid, what is this, Grey's Anatomy? Good grief. Maybe they should just call an end to the season right now so the writers can re-group.

Image credit: ABC.

Gizzie Gone? Confusion Over Whether Heigl & Knight Will Leave 'Grey's'

*Some Grey's spoilers below. . . You've been warned!*

The writing has been on the wall for some time.

T.R. Knight has been unhappy that his George O'Malley has seemed liked persona non grata on Grey's Anatomy these days. During the last episode, if you blinked, you missed him. And with a two-hour Grey's-Private Practice crossover extravaganza slated for this Thursday, I'm not expecting George to have much more airtime. If he does, I'll be very surprised.

Katherine Heigl -- who publicly lamented the fact that her character, Izzie Stevens, had a cruddy story arc last season -- has been rewarded by having her character talk and have "sex" with her dead finance Denny Duquette, who is likely, according to news reports, the manifestation of some type of brain tumor or something of that ilk. While we mercifully didn't see Denny last week, I fully expect that the next time we see him, Izzie's head will have exploded. Will that mean the end of her character? Who the heck knows?

The internet has been abuzz over the past few days with reports that both Knight and Heigl's characters will soon leave Grey's. Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello echoed those reports -- ". . . all indications are that it will happen. The only question is when." -- adding that show creator Shonda Rhimes may want "Heigl and Knight to briefly reprise their roles next season." That would rule out the possibility of Izzie dying from a brain tumor or aneurysm this Thursday, unless, of course, she's slated to return as a ghost to haunt Alex Karev, who'll have had two serious girlfriends leave following serious medical problems.

Those who've commented on Ausiello's article at EW.com are all over the map about what they think about the possibility of these two original characters leaving, but many are in agreement that Grey's isn't what it used to be.

Your thoughts Grey's fans?

Image credit: ABC.

Curious About George: Will He Exit 'Grey's' Too?

As Grey's Anatomy fans are adjusting to the abrupt departure of Dr. Erica Hahn and trying to figure out what the heck is going on with Izzie Stevens, comes the news that George O'Malley may leave too. The scoop-a-licious Michael Ausiello over at Entertainment Weekly (he has major Grey's sources) says that actor T. R. Knight wants to leave the hit medical drama:

"Multiple sources confirm that T.R. Knight has asked to be released from his contract, a request that both ABC and Grey's show-runner Shonda Rhimes appear poised to grant. 'They're working out the details now,' whispers an ABC insider."

This would be a shame. I see George's character as an everyman. He doesn't come from wealth (a la Callie Torres) and didn't have highly connected parents (a la Meredith Grey). He had a middle class American family upbringing and overcame the humiliation of failing his intern exam. He's the character whose flaws (the Gizzie debacle notwithstanding) are most relatable.

So if George leaves Seattle Grace, he'll leave a huge hole from which I seriously wonder if Grey's can recover. (One fan call George, as opposed to Meredith, "the heart" of Grey's.) Grey's, after all, is not ER, which, over a decade or so, has seen a cast of thousands go through its hospital doors. Grey's is intrinsically character-based, not really a medical procedural. Characters make or break it.

If George leaves, do you think it'll hurt Grey's irreparably?

Image credit: ABC.

Dr. Hahn Out of 'Grey's'

What a huge bummer.

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) -- who recently commenced a relationship with Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) on Grey's Anatomy -- will only appear in one more episode of the Thursday night drama. Following on the heels of the intensely moving scene from last week's installment, where Erica said she never realized she was gay (the "you are glasses" monologue), ABC execs apparently got cold feet about the character, according to Michael Ausiello who wrote:

"I'm told this was not [show creator] Shonda Rhimes' decision but rather an order that came down from the network. According to one Grey's source, the suits 'had issues' with both the explicit direction [Erica and Callie were] taking . . . and, more importantly, with the Hahn character in general."

I was fond of Erica's take-no-prisoners attitude in a world inhabited by thin-skinned egomaniacs. She was the only character who didn't seem, in any way, to be flaky or whiny.

Hopefully this doesn't mean that Callie will now be portrayed as someone who's floundering around, unsure of what or who she wants. Callie used to be a strong, maverick character, living and dancing in the hospital basement with abandon, until writers decided to make her rich and living the high life in a hotel, marrying George O'Malley on a whim.

Image credit: ABC.