So Many Parentheticals…

The least conducive activity to writing (for me anyway) is having our TV on. Regardless, it’s our most-used appliance, for everything from Netflix marathons to hopscotching through YouTube’s algorithm. In this age of smart TVs, practically every program or movie is at our fingertips. There’s dozens of new things friends and the majority of the internet keep recommending, and what are we watching right now? Grey’s Anatomy.

(Saying there will be spoilers for a show that’s been on for almost 2 decades seems superfluous, but, plot points from the first half of the show’s seasons will be referenced)

It’s probably been a couple of months since we started a pseudo-re-watch of Grey’s Anatomy (I describe it that way because my wife watched more of the show than I did, and we both stopped watching at various points so some episodes are old hat and others are practically brand new). I have a strangely high level of nostalgia about the first couple seasons of the show, mostly because of the soundtracks released with them. Much of that music accompanied me into my early adulthood, and as we navigated that first season at Seattle Grace, it felt like hearing a bunch of old songs on the radio. It’s sad to me that I have this random collection of soundtracks from my late teens, and then digital downloads and streaming gradually took over and now there are these random holes online where I know a soundtrack should be, but due to licensing it’s either incomplete or completely non-existent on the internet.

I can’t point to what it is I enjoy about this show, especially because for a while it was the (self-described) nemesis of another show I watched. I got really into CSI my junior year of college. Like, embarrassingly into that show. There was fanfic, there were post-episode AIM live chats, incessant spoiler hunting, and a whole lot of cringe-inducing behavior I’d honestly prefer never to think about again. Grey’s and CSI ended up running in the same time slot on different networks, and a bunch of us CSI fans were horrified that something could take down “our” show (in terms of audience rankings), especially a medical melodrama with McDreamy and a bunch of girly nonsense (because “not like other girls” was definitely a running undercurrent in my area of fandom).

So, I got through maybe 2 seasons of Grey’s when they first aired, and then it was up against my main show and it was dead to me. That lasted until internet fandom started going nuts over Callie Torres and Erica Hahn, and then Arizona Robbins. I’m a sucker for a romance. I hate admitting that, because it’s mushy and feels silly, but watching a well-executed romance unfold on screen is like catnip to me.

As someone who was starting my own coming out journey, Callie’s experience was an odd blueprint I felt compelled to hold up to my own life. I probably take more advice from fictional characters than I ought to, but I watched her journey and locked away pieces of it in my mind and heart, because there wasn’t much in real life for me to go off from. People talk about how much we need queer stories, and as someone lost in the madness of my early twenties without much of a roadmap, hers was one I needed.

The difficult thing about television for me was sweeps season, and I can see its impact on network television in the late aughts and early 2010s. As a fandom-obsessed person, I feel like I became hyper-aware of sweeps episodes, which almost always involve high-drama plot lines meant to draw in as much viewership as possible, in order for the network to really justify advertising revenue. Those episodes where 5 people walk into a building and you wonder which one of them isn’t going to walk out of it? Sweeps. 3 weeks in a row of episodes ending on cliffhangers? Sweeps. Someone’s life hanging in the balance? Sweeps. November, February, and May episode airdates in a season were almost guaranteed sweeps episodes.

I always find the effect of sweeps episodes hard on the characters I love. Because writing things to draw in viewers doesn’t mean a bunch of stories where everyone skips around being happy, it’s almost always a threat of some kind, whether it’s to someone’s job, their relationship, or their life.

I remember at some point, when Callie and Arizona really started taking off there was a blurb in some media about the show and how their relationship wasn’t going to be as wishy-washy as the straight relationships on the show. I don’t know why any showrunner would make that comment about anything they’ve created without a concrete end date. Long-running serial melodramas can’t survive a character being happy and contented forever. It’s not compelling fiction, it’s not how you get viewers butts on the couch every week. Plus, you make two characters these ideals in work, love, and life and they somehow get boring compared to everyone else around them.

Inevitably, Callie and Arizona split up and got back together a few times. I will say, the show managed to thread a very fine needle when it came to giving Callie the baby she so desperately wanted. Also, they gave Sara Ramirez the opportunity to show of their Tony-Award-Winning vocal talents, with a musical episode, which I remember rolling my eyes at when I heard about it first airing, but it was awesome.

We’re in the very middle of the show in our re-watch right now, and I know more hardship is coming, which is the thing that could make me very reticent to coming back to it. Arizona has survived a plane crash only to lose her leg, and she’s going to be bitter and hateful for a while and watching through that is going to make this hard for me.

Fortunately (?) for Grey’s there are a host of other compelling characters to watch as well. We’re still at the beginning of Season 9. Cristina Yang is in Minnesota right now, I’m sure that will continue to go about as well as it has so far. The Mercy Westers who survived the mass shooting have somehow endeared themselves to me. And Miranda Bailey has become my favorite character, probably because of some aspirational desires to be half as good at thinking on my feet as she can be. So, even though the show broke my heart stringing Lexie Grey along for a whole freaking season, just to kill her after she confessed her feelings to Mark, well, I’ll keep watching.

I’ll keep watching because sometimes those sweeps storylines are too compelling to resist. And there are new faces I might grow to love just as much as the familiar ones. Plus, we have to at least watch until Derek dies, because I know that’s going to happen at some point too.