How Does Grey's Anatomy Do In Its Latest Examination?

Show: Grey's Anatomy.

Premiered: March 2005.

Why Was It Made? Looking back, it seems like it must have been made because executives at ABC recognized the potential in series creator Shonda Rhimes to create storylines that viewers (women, mostly) would find as addictive as crack, even though that short first season wasn't nearly as sensationalistic as things would eventually get. But medical dramas are a proven TV staple; we'd never seen one that focused so much on surgical residents; and Patrick Dempsey was cast just in time for his former nerd looks to have been seasoned into late-in-life McDreamitude.

Why Didn't I Watch? I did watch the first three seasons, and liked it even when I knew I was letting it manipulate me; I even cried at the last episode I watched, the Season 3 finale, when Burke called off his wedding to Cristina and she desperately begs Meredith to get her out of her constricting wedding gown...but it wasn't enough to keep me watching all the other idiots that, by then, I hated. Okay, mostly George and Izzie, those dipshits.

Why Give It A Shot? Cristina was always my favourite character, and now that Sandra Oh is leaving the show, I wanted to see under what circumstances they write out her character. As my esteemed colleague Jessica Morgan has said, how Grey's Anatomy works is, you get more and more annoyed at it over the course of a season and swear you're going to quit watching, and then Shonda comes back and writes a killer season finale and you're like, "Ugh, FINE." And when an original character like Cristina is getting her sendoff, that effect will probably be multiplied a hundredfold!

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Would Seem To Invite Further Viewing? Well, I seem to have completely missed the Age of Owen, which is a pity. For me. He doesn't have a ton to do in the season's penultimate episode, but his unconditional support of Cristina paired with his horror of Kepner's OR oversharing (of which more later) made him a big winner with me straight out of the gate. (I understand from my sister, who's never stopped watching and sherpaed me through the episode, that his marriage to Cristina ended partly because she'd told him she didn't want kids and he was fine with it until he wasn't, which I'm not as crazy about, but I guess I can give him a pass for stuff I didn't actually witness.) And Bailey is still a complete badass -- particularly here, giving a "bubble boy" (sorry, but that's what they call him!) gene therapy with deactivated HIV, over his parents' short-sighted, panicky objections, which sounds bad, but she did get signed consent!

What Aspects Of The Latest Episode Discourage Further Viewing? ...Kind of a lot. Meredith and Derek are smugger and more obnoxious than ever, particularly now that Derek's fuckup sister has come to town to use them as her relationship exemplars. The doctors are no more professional than they were when I stopped watching; Kepner, if you can't stop yourself sobbing about your broken marriage while you're WRAPPING UP A SURGICAL OPERATION, you need to LEAVE THE ROOM and maybe after that CONSIDER A CHANGE OF CAREER. And the manipulation, you guys! A plot-convenient pregnancy for an estranged couple and parents forced to choose which of their two extremely sick kids (they actually have three of those, but only two are really in play this wee) is going to get a donor heart? Obviously one of them was going to die; I was actually surprised that, since both are Cristina's patients while she's in the middle of a professional crisis after failing to win a prestigious award, it wasn't both of them.

Final Verdict: With only three more episodes to go in the season, I guess I have to see exactly how the Cristina plotline ends. Whether I jump back in from there for Season 11 (!) depends on how killer Shonda's finale script turns out to be.