Thursday, September 26, was not just any other Thursday,
but the premiere of Grey’s Anatomy’s 10th season, and the return of
television’s most “dark and twisty” female character. Grey’s Anatomy is an American television medical
drama that premiered on March 27, 2005 and has aired a total of ten seasons to
date. The very first episode starts with a long shot of Patrick Dempsey’s
bare-naked butt as his one-night -stand climbs out of bed, late for her first
day of work, and demands that he leaves her house. This is our first introduction to one of
television’s most complicated and intriguing characters, Meredith Grey, played
by Ellen Pompeo.
Ellen Pompeo stars as the
narrator of Grey’s Anatomy, playing an intern trying to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Her mother was an accomplished, famous surgeon who never had the time to show
Meredith any attention, leaving Meredith to build extremely high walls. The episodes
revolve around Meredith’s time as an intern and the many interesting characters
that she meets along the way while trying to find the impossible balance
between work and a having a personal life.
The first episode introduces
Meredith as a new intern at Seattle Grace Hospital. During her first day she
meets the other residents in her program, Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), George
O’Malley (T.R. Knight), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and Alex Karev (Justin
Chambers). These characters become her best friends, her fiercest competition,
the family she never had, and the show’s iconic main characters. Finally, the
first episode takes a turn for the unexpected when a few scenes later, Meredith
runs into her boss, Dr. Derek Shepard, the same man she had slept with the
night before. This first episode, one that I have watched countless times,
opens the door for multiple dynamic, complicated relationships. Despite its
superficial medical focus, relationships is exactly what this show is all
about. Whether it’s marriages, couples, co-workers, patient to doctor; the show
loves to test all different kinds of limits.
The executive produce and
writer of the series, Shonda Rhimes, spent a great deal and effort developing
Meredith Grey’s character. When Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times describes Meredith she calls her, "a
prickly, independent sort whose ambition, and ambivalence, is fueled by the
fact that her mother was a gifted surgeon and now suffers from
Alzheimer's." It’s descriptions like these that make it no surprise that
Meredith refers to herself on the show as “dark and twisty”. In fact, her daily
dialogue is filled with sayings like, “I’m not happy and bubbly. I’m dark and
cloudy”.
What
made Meredith even more interesting was how well liked her persona was.
Usually, when characters are sad and angry all the time they are critiqued by
viewers as not relatable and always moping around. However, something about the
way that Shonda Rhimes wrote her character created an opposite response. Almost
immediately, audience members fell in love with Meredith’s character. There is
a whole community of Grey’s fan who refer to themselves as the “dark and twisty”
and there is even merchandise with the phrase printed across the front. So the
question I found myself asking was, what did Rhimes do differently that makes
Meredith’s bitter character so appealing?
I
truly believe that the usual routine of funny, light-hearted, romantic main
characters caused Meredith to be the breathe of fresh air that viewers needed.
Although audience members fell in love with Meredith, critics began to give
negative reviews once her dark disposition did not go away after a few seasons.
During the show's third season, Cristopher Monfette of IGN stating that Meredith’s
storyline has become "some bizarrely under-developed sub-plot about depression".
As these criticisms began to surface, Rhimes began to allow Meredith’s
character to develop drastically.
Throughout
the seasons, Meredith’s personality has evolved from damaged, to happy, until
she was finally considered, “fixed”. In an early season, Meredith Grey allows
herself to drown, willingly puts her hand near explosives, and puts herself in
many other dangerous situations, making herself harmful to herself and others.
It was this type of raw emotion that kept me enthralled with her character. It
is very unlikely to come across a protagonist in television who is so openly
sad. Usually, a main character, especially in such a serious drama, is more
likely to be funny and quirky in order to take the harsh edge off the plot. In
later seasons, Meredith marries Dr. Shepard, adopts a child and then has
another child despite her infertility, leaving her to lead a happy life she
never thought she would have. Even though this transformation took ten seasons,
it is still shocking to see how far she has come from the first season. Rhimes
comments on this transformation by saying, “It makes me happy to see her
happy."
Although
her depressing attitude is less prominent than it was in the past, Meredith is
just as complicated as always. When asked to describe what kind of person
Meredith is Rhimes replied, “Meredith is the girl who put her hand on a bomb in
a body cavity. Meredith is the girl who tried to help a serial killer kill
himself, so that he could donate his organs. Meredith, and this is obvious, has
a compass that has always led her to shades of grey.” These situations and
unexpected actions have made Meredith the complicated character that has truly
made a mark in recent television dramas.
All in all, Shonda Rhimes is an award-winning writer who crossed boundaries and took risks while thoughtfully developing Meredith Grey into the dark and twisty role that we will always know and love her as.
