Being “Dark and Twisty” Isn’t So Bad

 Thursday, September 26, was not just any other Thursday, but the premiere of Grey’s Anatomy’s 10^th 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.