Great news, right? A show that millions love will continue to live on.
Only once the show comes back this fall, it will be missing one of its key players. If any of you, like me, have followed the show all these years, you know that Sandra Oh, who for 10 years has played hardcore and massively lovable Dr. Cristina Yang, hung up her stethoscope for good.
Okay, all together now...
For a show that is known for writing out characters and adding new ones, this shouldn't be much of a surprise. But this one hurts. Not only me as a fan but, and I hate to say it, will probably hurt the entire show.
See, I've kind of grown up with this show. I started watching weekly at the start of Season 4, which aired when I was in 8th grade. I continued to watch, bought the first 3 seasons on DVD to catch up on what I'd missed (this was before the age of Netflix), and stuck with the show through thick and thin. I watched in awe and bowed down to the writers with the "007" twist at the end of Season 5, at the jaw-dropping shooting spree that rocked Seattle Grace Mercy West in the Season 6 finale. I sat through the cringe-worthy musical episode in Season 7 and rolled my eyes when characters like April Kepner and Teddy Altman came in and annoyed the living crap out of me (April is still there, guys. Still. There). The point is, here I am having just completed my sophomore year of college. I've grown, and so has Grey's. But I think where that growing differs is that Grey's has outgrown its purpose, and I think I have grown out of it.
The two biggest reasons I have for feeling this way are the characters and the story. When the show first started it was the story of five surgical interns--Meredith, Cristina, Izzie, George, and Alex. Now, only Meredith and Alex remain, with only one of them having any more story to tell--and his name isn't in the show's title. Meredith Grey, our protagonist and narrator of (almost) every episode in the series, has gone from dark-and-twisty intern to a successful general surgeon with a husband and two children. It's a pretty fulfilling story, one that feels finished. And yet the show lives on, continuing to put this character (and with her, everyone else) on a journey that felt finished years ago. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like if your protagonist has evolved as much as she can, then the story is complete. And that's okay, because we as the audience got to witness some wonderful character development and the writers have that to be proud of. Unfortunately, a complete story doesn't seem to cut it, hence the impending 11th season.
This same complaint goes for many other original characters. Dr. Bailey, who once was such a compelling character, is now stuck peddling through storylines that do nothing to develop her character. I feel the same about Dr. Weber. And Dr. Shepard. Even Dr. Torres and Dr. Robbins, who aren't even original characters but have been on the show long enough to show just how tired these characters are. These once beloved characters have run out of juice, and as upset as I was about Sandra Oh's departure at first, I can understand her reasoning behind it and am actually glad she left before Cristina could meet the same fate.
The show has lost its share of great characters before--George, Izzie, Lexie, Mark, to name a few of my favorites who left too soon. With these losses, the show has added new characters. A natural next step, but when these characters are not as compelling as the ones we left behind, that becomes a problem. Take the new batch of interns we got at the beginning of Season 9. We as the audience had just lost Lexie Grey and were in the midst of losing Mark Sloan after Season 8's horrific plane crash, two amazing, beloved characters who were being traded for five unfortunately annoying characters that tried and failed to fill the void. This may sound harsh, but as hard as I tried to like these new interns, I couldn't. It didn't help that their characters felt like carbon copies of previous characters (Is it just me, or is Jo, Alex Karev's new soulmate, a little too much like his former soulmate Izzie Stevens?) whose sole purpose is to steal surgeries and sleep with their superiors. These are all things the show has done before, and done better with Meredith and Co. in earlier years. I get that Grey's was trying to make things interesting again with these new interns, but it was a move that made its increasing age even more apparent to the audience.
Some people may disagree with me, and that's fine. But, much like Sandra Oh just did, I am going to have to leave this show behind. For me, a story should only go on until it's complete, and I feel like Grey's story has been complete for some time now. Last week's finale would've been a perfect time to close the doors permanently--all the characters we've known and loved for 10 years going their separate ways after doing all they could do in Seattle. Yet the show will go on. I know I'm not a writer on the show; who am I to say that the story is complete? I put my faith in the people behind the words for so long, when a lot of other people had already abandoned ship. Of course I will be back for the series finale, whenever that may be. For now, though, I have signed my discharge papers and have said my goodbyes to Grey Sloan Memorial.
If any of you are fans of the show, do you feel the same? Or do you believe Grey's should continue on? Feel free to comment below, or let me know your thoughts on Twitter, @DustinVann.
Until next time,
Dustin
