As for last night's Grey's Anatomy... I thought it was awesome, as usual. I've been reading what Shonda Rhimes and the other writers have been posting on Grey Matter, and thinking about the whole Meredith thing, and I finally figured it out.
It's not that I hate Meredith Grey, it's that I hate Ellen Pompeo. As written, Meredith is a flawed yet sympathetic character who, by all rights, should be perfectly likeable. As portrayed by Pompeo, however, Meredith is a limp, sulky, humorless, one-note, self-involved hosebeast. There's no depth to her performance, nothing going on beneath all that surface mopiness.
Think about it: on the surface, most of the characters aren't particularly likeable. Christina's a bitch, Bailey's mean, Alex is insensitive, George is pathetic, Burke is a cold fish and Shepherd is an indecisive, lying dick. But all of those actors are so wonderful that they've managed to take these traits and make them assets. They show us with subtle glances and gestures and expressions that there's a whole lot more going on beneath their very human and very flawed exteriors, and we fall madly in love with them. We forgive them when they hurt each other, we celebrate with them when good things happen and we sympathize when everything goes to crap.
Not Pompeo, though. She's just as colorless as her character's name. Christina was exactly right: "Everyone does terrible things." We should be able to forgive Meredith because what she did to George is not really any worse than what George did to Nurse Syphilis, or what Alex did to Izzie, or what Christina and Burke do to each other, or what Addison did to Derek, or what Derek did to Meredith, or what Izzie was doing to Alex last night. We can forgive all of them and love them even more because they screw up. So why not Meredith? Because she sucks.
That crying scene last night? Just plain embarrassing. Especially on the show that gave us Sandra Oh's masterful hysterical crying scene earlier this season. It's really a shame to see such a fantastic show tied to such a weak actress. If only they'd named it "Seattle Grace" or something, I could fantasize about the day they wake up and give Ellen Pompeo the boot.
That's okay, though, because as long as they give us stuff like Bailey's milk letting down (oh, how many times I suffered through that myself, but never with as much dignity and style), I will continue to be so madly in love with this show that even Ellen Pompeo can't ruin it for me. And I loved that George did the voiceover this week instead of Meredith. And honestly, I'm glad that the whole George/Meredith BAD THING happened, because I can see where it's going to lead George, and it's all of the good. George dodged the bullet, and now he can finally stop pining after Meh and go for the hot orthopedic surgeon.
