SLOW BURN GREY’S ANATOMY EPISODES MAKE FOR A BORING SEASON 15
This show should end.
Grey’s Anatomy has lost its direction. The brain child of Shonda Rimes which has been so well received, enough to inspire a generation into medicine, has faulted lately in producing the same energy and strong drama driven narratives that has established the show into its 15th season.
The latest episodes of Grey’s Anatomy are dry, lackluster and messy at best. A close look at episode 5 of the season, will give you a taste of the complete dissociation with the intensity with which the show has become famous for. The character developments are meaningless and stir little excitement from viewers.
A perfect example is Jackson Avery and Maggie Pierce’s precarious relationship. Jackson is back but so what? The relationship between Jackson and Maggie is both questionable and problematic. Consider the fact that, because of the marriage of their parents, they are legally step siblings, then there’s the little detail that Jackson has entirely different values that juxtapose to that of Maggie’s. It seems as if their relationship is forced because the writers did not want Maggie to be single and so chose the eligible Avery to be her partner because of how good he looks on paper. In reality, they have no rhythm, no real connection and their relationship seems very shallow and stunted.
With Jackson by her side, Maggie is almost pitiful because as much as Jackson is presented as the best option for her, he holds her back and makes her complacent when normally she’s quick to voice her own ideas and points of view. The writers have turned away from making her admirable, strong and relatable because of her quirkiness, to a nosy and anxious mess that is so afraid to be single. She’s so afraid, she’s staying with someone who isn’t right for her. It seems completely out of character of the vivacious Maggie that was initially introduced in 2014.
Next, the writers seems to gloss over the destructive nature of Owen and instead almost paint him as infallible. Let’s review some of Owen’s destructive behavior over the years.
He was emotionally abusive to Christina Yang, very controlling and used his trauma from being a United States Army surgeon as an excuse to be damaging. He refused to acknowledge this side of him and gaslights his significant others like Christina, Teddy and Amelia when they pointed out his destructive ways and he is so selfish that, he jumps from one woman to another knowing how painful and hurtful it could be to the women.
He embodies a benevolent sexist and only seems to respect women that fall within the paradigms he’s created of how a woman should be. You can see this with his relationship with Amelia where he attempted to force her to have kids with him, never allowing her the space and freedom to open up to him about what she wanted and the issues she was having. It’s also clear with his relationship with his sister who, despite being a respected physician, he decided to thwart an opportunity she deserved, under a disguised effort to remain in control of her life.
Meredith is not excused from the flat character developments. When the series was initially moving forward, focusing on Grey as the main character made sense because she was growing and had so many different aspects of her personality that were still left to be told, but now she’s a dry character.
She’s happy, which is great but the writers haven’t been able to translate that contentment into interesting TV. It seems Meredith has been typecast to be a character who is only interesting when she is facing difficulties otherwise, her story is made boring. The show should continue to focus on the next doctors in the hospital and other characters instead of returning to Grey and her boring life.
Since the character’s developments have been stalled, everybody has lost the passion and exciting energy they brought to the show and instead the story line is now tiring. Episode 6 had an equally sluggish story line progression. Andrew Webber seems to be flailing and his tendency to force his way into other people’s life is not so endearing now but more disturbingly annoying instead.
It would be much more tolerable if there was some kind of transition to this form of story telling direction, where random stories are interwoven together haphazardly with no connection. Before, the idea was that this was a coming of age story of young doctors but now it seems to be more of a telling of every day lives of doctors and their lives are so somber and dull. Even Meredith’s deadbeat father dying doesn’t have the Humph that the writers would normally package it.
Where is the passion, humor, fire? The only entertaining character so far is Dr. Levi Schmitt.
Is this what Grey’s Anatomy has come to? Is it because they are happy? The ending of episode 6 didn’t even have a cliff hanger; oddly enough, it was well concluded. It seems this season is meant to be a wrap up of all the loose ends, and viewers are getting a little tease of that throughout the episodes so that it’s not so jarring when the show is finally over. This is very bitter-sweet.