Color me disappointed. This Grey's Anatomy episode didn't exactly deliver the goods. Of course we were curious since the media currently promote the hell out of this series. We wanted to know what exactly happened to Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith), just how "toned down" is Mer's bisexual friend Sadie (Melissa George), does Kevin McKidd's role as Dr. Owen Hunt improve (as in, does the doctor's presence at Seattle Grace start making sense) and what's Mary McDonnell (Battlestar Galactica) doing there?
Hahn's gone - but not dead. No car accident, no spontaneous combustion. Dare I say it? Okay - she's alive, so Brooke Smith could resurface. Just sayin'.
Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), as a result of Hahn's leaving, had to be heartbroken. This included crying on McSteamy's (Eric Dane) shoulder. But, of course it does. Surprise, surprise, contrary to what Shonda Rhimes proclaimed in her statement re: Hahn's leaving, Torres did not (yet?) label herself a lesbian. A "once-ian" or "twos-ian" was suggested. Not commenting on that. She probably has to sleep with a guy or ten to figure out that sex is sex and love is love and some major "het" studs are closeted homosexuals. That could take a season or three.
Mary McDonnell played heart surgeon Dr. Virginia Dixon and gave a quasi-imitation of Boston Legal's Jerry Espenson sans the Tourette's. So by the time the big huge "reveal" re: Dixon's Asperger's came along, Dr. Bailey was the only one surprised by that "reveal". Bailey, may we suggest watching TV? (Yes, we do watch shows that are so much more creative than Grey's Anatomy, but shhhhh...) There was nothing to indicate that Mary McDonnell would have to come back - though Seattle Grace needs a great heart specialist, with Dr. Hahn gone and all... (too bad Owen Hunt isn't one....)
The opening of Grey's Anatomy 508 suggested we'd get to see lots of tension, Cristina (Sandra Oh, Blindness) and Derek (Patrick Dempsey) bonding, Mer and Sadie catching up and perhaps renewing their relationship. No such luck. Sadie stormed in, threw herself between Cristina and Mer, and then started working in the hospital and hanging out with other interns. In the very end Mer and Der started talking about Sadie and then -- bye, see ya next week, suckers. Grey's Anatomy is a big tease (promoting the hell out of Sadie for weeks, not delivering anything interesting this episode).
By the way - We do call Sadie by her name simply because "I'm only here to create conflict because the writers can't think of any other way to create conflict than to bring in new characters in an already ridiculously large cast" woulde be too long. So Sadie it is.
Cristina had to endure another one of Dr. Owen Hunt's (Kevin McKidd) supposedly sexy but totally uncalled for kiss-attacks. I'm glad she walked away from that. By the way - lousy performance on McKidd's part. We feel his pain, though. His role blows. If he suffers from PTSD, as some viewers seem to think, I'd like to see him suffer from the symptoms associated with that, not just acting weird. At this point, we're definitely not rooting for a Cristina/Owen relationship.
Apropos Dr. Owen Hunt. At the beginning of season 5 Dr. Webber (James Pickens jr.) was determined to improve the hospital's ranking. So he hires an Army doctor? A guy for emergency-let's-save-a-life-and-not-worry-about-anything-else (like: unsightly scars, for example) type of doc? How does that make sense? Army vets and their families shudder at the thought of having those less-than-fab docs working at a (supposedly) fine hospital. This character has "I am only here to function as Cristina's love interest" written all over him.
Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Who else could bring a little tension in Izzie's (Katherine Heigl) life? George is busy being a doctor for a change and viewers would get upset if he ever came near Izzie again, so they had to bring in Denny's ghost. That's the problem writers face when their characters don't have a life. Nothing ever came of meeting Izzie's daughter, remember her? She lives outside the hospital.
As to Izzie - is she completely losing her mind? Is Katherine Heigl the next Grey's Anatomy star to be axed (as was talked about a while back)?
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Grey's Anatomy - Lesbian? Queer? Now What?
Before we start talking about the Abracadabra! Lesbian Be Gone! news re: Brooke Smith who played Dr. Erica Hahn, we need to acknowledge how badly Hahn's and Callie Torres' (Sara Ramirez) coming out was handled. Viewers experienced the allegories either as sidesplittingly funny (South of border!) or as yet further proof that when it comes to queer women (emphasis especially on women), the writers are still required to write in code, if they want to write at all.
Callie's coming out also showed the sitcom-character one has come to expect from former must-see TV-show Grey's Anatomy. Emphasis on sit. As in: don't leave the hospital, don't talk to strangers. Even if nothing you do inside the four walls of Seattle Grace makes sense, mind you, this is your jail, so deal with it. Usually characters find conveniently placed patients (from the outside world! ;) to share wisdoms, truths, and secrets with, to learn something from, but no such luck for Callie.
Here's a (somewhat strangely comforting) thought: Perhaps this is exactly what the writers wanted to tell us? That they wanted to write this storyline about two lesbians but had to do it - history repeating itself - in code a.k.a. "tasteful" and so as not to "offend" the mainstream viewer, who's still chewing on that gay marriage thingy and as if that weren't enough has to make up his or her mind and cast their vote today. The horror.
What was so bad about the coming out you ask?
Let me imagine for a second that I am an educated woman, a doc at Seattle Grace hospital, live in Seattle, fall in love with a female colleague. This is new territory, I'm totally insecure but also completely excited about it. What could I do? I'm a doc, so I do what I've learned: I research. Piece of cake. Yummy. (First I'd do #1, though that's not dramatic enough for GA, and 2, 3 and 4 aren't all too visual. More below.)
1. Talk to my prospective lover. (GA chicks talk all the time about anything, but....)
2. Use the IT to find queer sites and forums. Newbies show up daily, so there should be answers.
3. Call a GLBT hotline. Ask my questions.
4. Check out the gazillion of books written by and for queer women.
5. Seattle? Check The Stranger. Read the ads. All of them, including the one for Babes in Toyland. The future is near. They got cool chicks that will explain anything - anything to me.
6. Seattle? Go to the Wild Rose, check out what other lesbians look like, play pool, make friends. ;)
7. Seattle? Spend half the night dancing at Neighbours, the other half sharing information with the chicks I picked up there. Or who picked me up. Matters not.
8. Call five of my best friends. I'm (I being the fictitious Greys-Anatomy-character) the only person I know who doesn't know anybody who's queer. So I let my friends tell me what their queer friends told them. Hell, fictitious me knew my ignorance would come and bite me, so second hand info has to do. I am, after all, in a hurry. Third date rule etc. Does that rule apply to lesbians? Another question I have to ask them.
Callie could've done IT research or made that hotline call - and perhaps even felt not quite comfortable sharing her confusion with her colleagues. [Insert Melissa Etheridge tune, circa 1999] Considering the network's cold feet/some h8ful comments (posted by the usual few - but very loud - fundamentalists) one could understand confused Callie wanting to keep it under wraps. She could've played hide-and-seek with her laptop/phone, chased by her ever so nosey colleagues. Not completely un-dramatic or unfilmable, methinks.
Too bad Callie was confined to Seattle Grace, what a pity.
That's just from the top of my head. All of the above makes a ton more sense than talking to a man. A heterosexual man. A colleague. A former lover. McSteamy. Or Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), a heterosexual woman who I can't recall being particularly hip to anything queer in Grey's Anatomy. We've seen her limits when Gale Harold played that weird patient and Bailey showed her ignorance re: other minorities (not African-American) in the way she dealt with Cristina (Sandra Oh).
Oh, fictitious me has a fictitious Grey's Anatomy storyline: Callie talks to cutie Mark Sloane (Eric Dane) because she knows that he and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) shared not only one lover (hottie Kate Walsh as Addison Montgomery, which makes the two best friends "suspiciously close" to begin with), but had actual threesomes and sometimes - conveniently drunk, always a handy excuse - they would (insert allegory for "touching all over and so on and one thing led to another...." so as not to offend the mainstream Bible-quoting hater who just had to read this post and now has granny panties in a bunch or two and fingers ready to type h8ful comment). And they're no strangers to chicks and their girlfriends, the more the merrier, so.....
We hear that any queer storylines have been re-written.....
Callie's coming out also showed the sitcom-character one has come to expect from former must-see TV-show Grey's Anatomy. Emphasis on sit. As in: don't leave the hospital, don't talk to strangers. Even if nothing you do inside the four walls of Seattle Grace makes sense, mind you, this is your jail, so deal with it. Usually characters find conveniently placed patients (from the outside world! ;) to share wisdoms, truths, and secrets with, to learn something from, but no such luck for Callie.
Here's a (somewhat strangely comforting) thought: Perhaps this is exactly what the writers wanted to tell us? That they wanted to write this storyline about two lesbians but had to do it - history repeating itself - in code a.k.a. "tasteful" and so as not to "offend" the mainstream viewer, who's still chewing on that gay marriage thingy and as if that weren't enough has to make up his or her mind and cast their vote today. The horror.What was so bad about the coming out you ask?
Let me imagine for a second that I am an educated woman, a doc at Seattle Grace hospital, live in Seattle, fall in love with a female colleague. This is new territory, I'm totally insecure but also completely excited about it. What could I do? I'm a doc, so I do what I've learned: I research. Piece of cake. Yummy. (First I'd do #1, though that's not dramatic enough for GA, and 2, 3 and 4 aren't all too visual. More below.)
1. Talk to my prospective lover. (GA chicks talk all the time about anything, but....)
2. Use the IT to find queer sites and forums. Newbies show up daily, so there should be answers.
3. Call a GLBT hotline. Ask my questions.
4. Check out the gazillion of books written by and for queer women.
5. Seattle? Check The Stranger. Read the ads. All of them, including the one for Babes in Toyland. The future is near. They got cool chicks that will explain anything - anything to me.
6. Seattle? Go to the Wild Rose, check out what other lesbians look like, play pool, make friends. ;)
7. Seattle? Spend half the night dancing at Neighbours, the other half sharing information with the chicks I picked up there. Or who picked me up. Matters not.
8. Call five of my best friends. I'm (I being the fictitious Greys-Anatomy-character) the only person I know who doesn't know anybody who's queer. So I let my friends tell me what their queer friends told them. Hell, fictitious me knew my ignorance would come and bite me, so second hand info has to do. I am, after all, in a hurry. Third date rule etc. Does that rule apply to lesbians? Another question I have to ask them.
Callie could've done IT research or made that hotline call - and perhaps even felt not quite comfortable sharing her confusion with her colleagues. [Insert Melissa Etheridge tune, circa 1999] Considering the network's cold feet/some h8ful comments (posted by the usual few - but very loud - fundamentalists) one could understand confused Callie wanting to keep it under wraps. She could've played hide-and-seek with her laptop/phone, chased by her ever so nosey colleagues. Not completely un-dramatic or unfilmable, methinks.
Too bad Callie was confined to Seattle Grace, what a pity.
That's just from the top of my head. All of the above makes a ton more sense than talking to a man. A heterosexual man. A colleague. A former lover. McSteamy. Or Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), a heterosexual woman who I can't recall being particularly hip to anything queer in Grey's Anatomy. We've seen her limits when Gale Harold played that weird patient and Bailey showed her ignorance re: other minorities (not African-American) in the way she dealt with Cristina (Sandra Oh).
Oh, fictitious me has a fictitious Grey's Anatomy storyline: Callie talks to cutie Mark Sloane (Eric Dane) because she knows that he and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) shared not only one lover (hottie Kate Walsh as Addison Montgomery, which makes the two best friends "suspiciously close" to begin with), but had actual threesomes and sometimes - conveniently drunk, always a handy excuse - they would (insert allegory for "touching all over and so on and one thing led to another...." so as not to offend the mainstream Bible-quoting hater who just had to read this post and now has granny panties in a bunch or two and fingers ready to type h8ful comment). And they're no strangers to chicks and their girlfriends, the more the merrier, so.....
We hear that any queer storylines have been re-written.....
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