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.

Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: Season Finales, No-Win Pols' Wives & NY Mag on TV

Season Finales: The Good, The Bad

I always say that there’s too much pressure for TV shows' season finales to be homeruns all of the time. But part of that pressure is the result of the networks amping up viewers' expectations for some major razzle and dazzle. We set ourselves up to be wowed. And when that doesn't happen and our high expectations are dashed, we wind up disappointed.

The season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, which I reviewed on CliqueClack TV is a good example of this.


Image credit: ABC


The ABC drama has had a wonderful seventh season. Seriously. I've enjoyed it. However I wasn’t a big fan of the finale, because it seemed kind of flat (except for the Cristina and Owen storyline) and because I felt as though Derek’s character slipped back into old habits that I thought he'd put behind him, namely acting like a pompous jerk who’s above everyone, specifically Meredith. (The fact that he couldn’t just appreciate or acknowledge the fact that what Meredith did was rooted in love and her fiercely protective nature, peeved me to no end. Be angry, sure, but don’t take your ball and go home to sanctimoniously sulk.)

The Desperate Housewives finale was just blah, as was, frankly, most of the season which took camp to a subterranean level. So there was another murder and another cover-up on America's most dangerous street. There was another highly strung romantic relationship for Bree. Lynette and Tom were fighting again, albeit more seriously this time. (*yawn*) As much as I used to love this show, I think it's more than past time for it to take a bow.
One season finale that stood out and thoroughly entertained me from start to finish was The Good Wife's where Alicia not only triumphed in the court but, in the end, gave herself a little present in the form of one Will Gardner in a $7,800 a night presidential suite. (Technically, it was Will's credit card that gave them the gift of time alone together, but Alicia finally allowed herself to revel in this pleasure instead of being a stoic martyr.) The Good Wife's sophomore season was strong and the episodes leading up to the finale were fantastic and eagerly anticipated. As for the finale, it was well executed, stylistic and fun, the way I wish more finales would be.

Do you have a favorite season finale? A least favorite?

Politicians’ Wives: They Can’t Be ‘Winning’

Speaking of The Good Wife . . . people can’t seem to get enough of using that term not only in reference to Maria Shriver and the ongoing horrors that are being revealed about her husband’s outrageous infidelities, but are also applying the phrase to the wives of the presidential candidates. (Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman’s husbands aren’t getting as much coverage as the wives of potential presidential candidates are.)

In a Newsweek cover story, which seemed to pity and ridicule the wives of high powered pols, a campaign strategist observed, “We have achieved this odd place in American politics where the wife is no longer there just to support her husband. She has to be a full-fledged part of the campaign.”

What does being a “full-fledged part of the campaign” look like? Cindy McCain, wife of 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain explained in an accompanying essay: “Everything you do is criticized – your clothes are ugly; you’re not doing enough; your politics are questioned. It gets mean. I could not wait to get out of the job. The demands are significant and they are endless.”

I delved into what this unfortunate, hostile media climate means for women in my weekly pop culture column.

New York Magazine Takes on TV

It’s worth taking the time to go through New York Magazine’s big television-themed issue. From interviews with showrunners – including Shonda Rhimes of Grey’s Anatomy and Robert and Michelle King of The Good Wife -- who make some intriguing proposals for network TV (like 13-episode blocks with breaks in between instead of 22 episodes), to a quirky interview with Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler on her favorite TV characters and shows, the package is a good read.

Image credits: Randy Holmes/ABC, Newsweek, New York Magazine.

Notes on Pop Culture: Poehler on 'SNL,' 'Grey's' Sneak Peek & 'Modern Family'

One of my favorite comedians, Amy Poehler -- of NBC's underrated Parks & Recreation -- is hosting the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. I cannot wait. She’s been especially good when she’s appeared on SNL since departing as a cast regular, though I don’t think it’s possible for her to top the "Palin Rap" she performed when she was pregnant out . . . to . . . there . . . in 2008. NBC has released some promos:



Meanwhile, ABC has released a sneak peek of Grey’s Anatomy’s season seven post-hospital shooting premiere. I watched that shooting episode repeat last week, eerily on the same day when a real life shooting took place at Johns Hopkins. I hope that Shonda Rhimes & Company can deftly capitalize on the raw human emotions that an event like that would spawn but in a non-exploitative way, allowing the after-shocks to linger, instead of just pushing them aside for crazy-case-of-the-week drama.

Judging by a video excerpt ABC released, Derek's response to nearly dying after being shot by a disgruntled patient's husband is to speed like a maniac on the highway and get busted for it.

Don’t forget, tonight Modern Family and The Middle both return tonight. I’m hoping they’ll build upon strong freshmen seasons and that the Modern Family crew -- like the Mad Men folks -- will take its award accolades with grace, not let it destroy the sharp humor of the simple in the show and not muck it up with too many guest stars. *fingers crossed*