apropos of anything

I think Grey’s Anatomy has lost it.

I don’t know if it was the pressure of pumping out 27 episodes this season (even though some of those episodes carried over from the abbreviated first season). I don’t know if it was the increasingly high expectations, or the pressure, or if the magic of the earlier episodes was sheer luck, but something is not working right now.

And yet, I bet the ratings have never been higher.

The “Mer/Der of it all”, as showrunner Shonda Rhimes puts it, is not what attracted me to this show, nor is it what made me stick around. I might be the exception, but I don’t think I’m that much the exception, especially given Derek’s recent behavior. I liked this show because of the relationships between the interns, the way they made mistakes and learned from them and supported each other. I loved the end of the Christmas episode when the camera panned out on Izzie, Mer, and George all lying under the Christmas tree because that’s what made Izzie feel better. I liked it because of Meredith’s tenuous relationship with her secretly-ill famous mother who has suddenly disappeared. The Mer/Der of it all was for me like perfume, pleasant in small, restrained quantities, but noxious in large doses.

It follows, then, that I’m bored and frustrated by the way that Mer and Der never go away. You’re married, Derek. Try paying attention to your rocking wife, who yes, cheated on you, but who is trying so hard to atone for her mistakes, and you’re throwing her just enough crumbs to make her keep trying even though she should really divorce your sorry, emotionally-cheating ass. You’re moving on, Meredith. You awesomely told Derek off in “Damage Control”, so KEEP AT IT. McVet has plans! How about we find out what they are?

That brings us to Izzie, formerly a great character, who has been reduced to a blithering, weepy, hysterical shrew who cares nothing for the career she’s worked so hard for, her ethics, her oath to do no harm, or anything else not named “Denny.” Katherine Heigl makes me believe Izzie loves Denny that completely, but the writing doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t make sense that she’d fall so hard or so fast, nor does it make sense that her superiors wouldn’t have built a ten-foot brick wall around Denny’s room to keep her out of it once they found out she was behaving inappropriately with a patient. It’s not in character for the girl who blew off her boyfriend for the hospital in “No Man’s Land”, the girl who was absolutely furious at Meredith for wrecking a charmed career when she herself had to struggle immensely for the same thing (“When you walk in the room, people are glad to see you. When I walk into the room, people hope I’m the nurse.”). That girl would never have gotten involved with a patient, and she certainly wouldn’t have risked her license for him.

I’ve been waiting for them to kill off Denny for months now, just so Izzie would go back to being herself and have something to do other than make goo-goo eyes at him. The interns’ reactions to Denny’s death were reminiscent of earlier episodes and so worked well, but then they had to go tack on the ridiculous Mer/Der hookup and the new McDreamy/Mer/McVet triangle, and I rolled my eyes so much I could see the back of my head.

Poor, poor Addison. I hope she goes after him with a stilleto.

The storylines, and more importantly, the characters, have been treading water for most of the season, and it’s just not good writing anymore. That’s not to say it’s not absorbing television because it is, and I was glued to all two hours of tonight’s season finale. There’s a difference between a show you can’t stop watching and a show you can’t wait to watch, though.

I’m not even going to discuss the ridiculous prom IN A HOSPITAL.

For a response to “17 Seconds”, Sunday’s episode, head over to Dan’s because he says it much funnier than I do.

I do. I love her. And if/when the Meredith/McDreamy/Addison triangle resolves itself on Grey’s Anatomy, I’m going to be very disappointed if they find a way to dispose of Addison despite the hospital contract she signed early in the season.

It’s not fashionable to like Addison. The anti-Addison fanbase is rabid, and even Shonda Rhimes is all about Mer/McDreamy, which makes me marvel all the more at how complicated and well-rounded a character Addison is. She’s the unfaithful wife, yes, but there’s more to her. Much of the credit there goes to Kate Walsh, who does a fabulous job making Addison vulnerable personally while keeping her strong and capable professionally.

As much as I like Addison, I think Izzie’s got a point about the salmon-colored scrubs.

What I like best about Addison is not only does she never deny making an enormous mistake, she also accepts full responsibility for it. She doesn’t try to pin the blame on McDreamy for being distant in New York. She never tells him he drove her to it. He’s realized recently that maybe he was a contributing factor, but Addison is not the one who makes that clear to him.

And she doesn’t really complain when all the chips don’t fall her way. Early this season, Addison asks McDreamy if he’s “done hurting her back.” It’s a line that could easily go the poor-me route, which would have been irritatingly soap-operaish, but then she continues, “If not, I need to special order a thicker skin.” It’s painful, but she’s going to stand up and take it because she realizes to a certain extent she deserves it.

Addison came out to Seattle, she put her heart on the line, and if McDreamy had kicked her to the curb, I doubt she would have whined and moaned about it the way Meredith has been doing.

That being said, I know it is fashionable to dislike Meredith, but I’m not entirely on that train either, thanks to the writer’s blog. I get why Meredith makes the choices she does. She’s lonely too, and she’s carrying more than Addison is. She feels like she’s doing it all by herself. That doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t mean I approve, but I do understand. I want to see her pull herself out of it and start making good choices, something I think she’s never really been good at doing. Most of all, though, I want her to move past McDreamy before she goes back to him because otherwise I’m going to feel like her character is still in the same place it was in the first season finale, right before McDreamy tells her he’s so sorry.

The key to Grey’s Anatomy is characterization, not the triangle. The writers have created people who have layers and gray areas, who mess up and then have to deal with the resulting fallout. They are charmingly imperfect, sometimes so much, it’s harrowing to watch them. That’s what makes them great characters.

I didn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy Sunday night because I got a phone call around nine that I didn’t want to cut short; I taped it instead as ABC hadn’t yet announced that they will be re-airing the episode on Thursday, and after last week’s cliffhanger episode that left Meredith’s hand in a bomb, I simply had to know what was going to happen.

	George helping Bailey through her labor was one of the best, most moving parts of the episode

I liked it. I really liked it, liked the tension, liked the pacing, liked the character development, liked all of it, right up until they (spoiler-tagged on the homepage, but not on the permalink or in the archives) blew up Kyle Chandler’s character Dylan. Actually, it’s not the explosion itself that bothers me so much as the complete lack of reaction to it. I can forgive Meredith because she had enough personal trauma going on, and her shell-shocked behavior was a reaction in itself; I can forgive Christina and Izzie and George somewhat because the only time we saw them, they were with Meredith and obviously focused on her and what she needed. But everyone else? How did the Chief not know a bomb went off on the OR floor? Why did nobody else care that a man died? I know they have more of a personal connection to Burke and McDreamy, but there was an explosion and a man died trying to save the lives of the men you care about. Surely, surely, that warrants more than disarrayed milling about in the lobby. Surely somebody would be going to see if anyone else were injured, and if they, as medical professionals, could do something to help.

In the writer’s blog, Shonda Rhimes goes on and on about the technical aspects of that plot decision. She doesn’t once touch on the emotional side of it. For her, the whole thing is a plot twist, a series of special effects, the part she wants to have over so she can “pay attention to the other stuff, the estrogen stuff, the fun stuff like Bailey and George giving birth and Derek describing that kiss to Meredith…” This part of the story is only important because filming the scene took so much effort.

Except that by not showing any of the characters react to the twist, Rhimes divides her characters into classes, the important ones and the disposable ones. And while I understand tertiary characters are by definition disposable, a story that treats them so shabbily and insignificantly is weak and lopsided. You cannot go around reinforcing the idea that some people are less important than others.

This type of creative decision happens in television and movies all the time. I spent almost the entire two hours of Air Force One yelling at the screen, not because the movie was bad (it really, really was), but because the movie didn’t care who died so long as it wasn’t the President or his family. Yes, the President is the protagonist of Air Force One, but it shouldn’t be too much to ask to show some empathy for the poor no-name who just got sucked into the left engine. Ignoring him is lazy storytelling.

I would be equally as irritated by the omission if it had been in a book. The problem here isn’t the medium or the acting. The problem is the sloppy writing, which is actually hard for me to say since overall, it was a very strong episode. I actually cared about McDreamy and Meredith for the first time in a long, long while. I loved the parallel shower scene, all of the George scenes, and the general portrayal of people reacting to a traumatic situation. My only gripe is that nobody seemed to care when something bad happened to someone who wasn’t of their ranks.

Y’all know the drill… if you’re tagged, you gotta do it, especially if you’re just sitting up waiting until it’s time for you to take your parasite pills, so here it goes:
Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life…

Receptionist/secretary/assistant in a doctor’s office
News editor at the Technique
TA for the introductory CS classes at the CoC
The one I have now that I don’t want to elaborate on too much

	Like they say on TNT, the original is still the best (well, except for Empire, but I’m going to blur the line between the original movies, up until the point they leave Tatooine in Jedi

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have

Star Wars
Bend It Like Beckham
The Sound of Music
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Four Places I Have Lived

Chicago
Houston
Augusta, GA
Atlanta

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Gilmore Girls
Veronica Mars
Grey’s Anatomy

I am such a girl.

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation

Mumbai, India
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Disney World!
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Four Books I Love

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The High King by Lloyd Alexander
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

This was a hard one; how do you pick just four? Most of these are one of a series, and I would have put the whole series if I could. Instead, I put either my favorite of the series or the reason I found the series in the first place. Also, religious books were not eligible as that wouldn’t be a fair fight!

Four Websites I Visit Daily

CNN
Television Without Pity
the BBC
My friends and strangers

Four Favorite Foods

Fish biryani with eggplant raita
Curry — not what most westerners consider curry, but the creamy yellow sauce that desi people call curry
Chicago-style deep dish pizza
Ice cream

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

Mumbai: At the moment I am going through a horrible bout of homesickness for a place that isn’t technically even my home.
San Francisco: It’s beautiful and there are people I want to visit.
Medina: I love it so much the only reason I could bear to leave was because I was going to Mecca for the first time.
Spain: I want to see it!
Italy: Ditto!

Nowhere. East, west, hame’s best. Yes, I know that’s more than four.

I fought long and hard against this show. I swore I would never forgive it for getting both the plum time slot and all the overexposure denied the deliciously snarky Eyes even though I knew ABC, and not Grey’s Anatomy, was responsible for the stingy, short-sighted, prohibitive scheduling decisions. It was easier not to watch the show and stick it to ABC in my own tiny, completely unnoticeable way.

Then over the summer, I watched part of Grey’s Anatomy because I turned on the TV to catch the last fifteen minutes of Desperate Housewives and ended up staying for about forty-five minutes instead. The next week, it was a little more, and then a little more, until finally I was grudgingly watching the entire episode and even more grudgingly finding myself caring about the characters and falling completely in love with Dr. Bailey.

This was not a show I wanted to like, but I did. And tonight, when Meredith’s opening voice over was about how stupid Romeo and Juliet is and how if Juliet was dumb enough to do all the things Juliet does, she totally deserves what she gets? I was SOLD. One hundred percent, absolutely, totally into this show now, so much that I will even watch Meredith whine about how much her life sucks and pretend I don’t want to channel my inner valley girl and gag myself with a spoon.

As long as you hate, there will be people to hate. — George Harrison

Ain’t that the truth, George. The more you hate, the more there is to hate, and soon you hate everybody.

You know it’s bad when you spend thirty minutes trying to compose an email that won’t get you fired and doesn’t end with “P.S. I HATE YOU.” Actually, just having to remind yourself that you can’t tell somebody you hate them should send up a flare: Red alert, red alert! The hatred, it is spilling over and it’s infectious!

Of course, here in the South, I could just bless their hearts, the darlings, and it would be exactly the same thing.

Last night we went to Sambuca in Buckhead, which, for all its glitzy decor and flashy Web site, is vastly over-rated. Also sick-making, as I think my overpriced, underflavored, and extremely tardy salmon from last night is currently wreaking havoc on my digestive system. So of course today I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns because today is a day for hating and loathing and other fun things.

We were out lateish (for a work-night), and then I had to come home and pack and watch the season premiere of Alias because I had to know what happened to after the car crash and if (spoiler-tagged to avoid the great Alias Season Finale Fiasco of May 2005) the rumors that Michael Vartan is leaving the show are true. Which they were. And… I kind of hated it. Sydney wouldn’t respond that way! Vaughn wouldn’t do those things! How did Vaughn not die immediately after being sprayed with sixty-five machine gun bullets?Why are they destroying a dynamic we’ve loved for four years? Is this Ben Affleck’s fault?

Things are looking up, though. It’s ice cream Friday, and tonight I get to see Leta! Hopefully by then the ice cream will have done its work and I can go back to at least pretending that I don’t hate everything.

The end.

P.S. Yes, Dan, I’m at work.

When I realized on Thursday that I must have lost my mind to agree to go to Augusta this of all weekends, it was too late to back out since I’d promised my mother I would take her shopping at Pier One. She won’t go herself — it’s long and complicated — so I was pretty much stuck.

The Golden Bell at the Augusta National. The azaleas aren’t super visible in this picture, but they’re there.

I can’t remember the last time I was in Augusta during the Masters. Hands-down, you cannot find better Masters coverage than the Augusta Chronicle; they do a full “pull-off” section that takes the place of the front page (Iraqi protests? Who cares when Jack Nicklaus is saying his goodbye to the National?) with an amazing lot of pictures. Everything they say about the National being gorgeous is absolutely true, but really, the whole city is in bloom this week. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the azaleas until I saw them yesterday.

Today’s Chronicle coverage had several inches devoted to Tiger Wood’s unspectacular performance earlier in the week, as well as his suprising surge of seven straight birdies yesterday. Golf pundits just love to rag on Tiger — his swing, his caddie, his coach, his marriage. It’s why I want him to win. I’ve rarely cared in the past, but this year, I want Tiger to win as a giant birdie of another kind for all his detractors. As of this morning, he was in the lead, but the whole thing is too nerve-wracking for me to watch, so I’ve got the Cubs vs. the Brewers on instead.

(As an aside, I never thought I’d be typing “too nerve-wracking” as a descriptor for a golf game.)

I wanted to go the Braves game with AM today to see Smoltz start his first game at Turner Field since the ’90s. Of course, that meant I’d have to leave Augusta by 10:00 a.m., and that would never, ever happen. Even when we insist that we have to leave by 2:00 p.m., we don’t make it out of there because of laundry and clothes and not being able to leave unless we eat lunch and all our clothes smell like masala. So we had to skip this one, which I hear was a great Smoltz outing and a poor Braves one. (The Braves lost 6-1, but Smoltz had fifteen strikeouts.) Pedro pitched for the Mets, so it would have been a great game to see, especially with the lovely and amazing weather we’re having. I guess you take what you can get, though.

In the “Yay!” category, Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas tells TWoP the show has been picked up for a second season. Wheeee!

Updated 4/10/2005, 10:24 PM: It’s Tiger!

Woods reacts to the shot that secures his fourth green jacket.

You would think I, who watched the pilot episode of Desperate Housewives the first time it aired, would know better than to leave a candle burning when I went to sleep.

Thank God my house didn’t burn down.

That’s what the God avatar told Joan on this week’s Joan of Arcadia. What he meant was that we are responsible for stepping in and helping out when others need us to, even if they don’t realize they need us to. We are responsible for recognizing that something is wrong. It’s why Kevin retains some guilt over his accident and why Joan has guilt over Judith’s hospitalization; both characters could have done more to prevent those outcomes.

That is not to say there is no such thing as personal responsibility, just that personal responsibility for an action often extends to more than one person. John Donne said it when he wrote that no man was an island. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf said it tonight when he advised us to consider every action we take because if we do something that causes someone to react, we are responsible for the reaction.

And that is why we, the Muslim community of the world, need to do more than we are doing.

The Prophet Muhammad warned us to beware of extremism in religion as it destroyed the people who came before us. There is just as much extremism in too much religion as there is in too little; those who have too little lose their connection with God, and those who have too much falsely justify every wrong action as being the will of God. There is a story about the Prophet Muhammad during the Miraj; the angel Gabriel offered him a glass of water, a glass of milk, and a glass of wine, and he chose the milk. When asked about it later, he said the wine was too rich and the water too poor, so he chose the one in the middle, the milk. Beware the extremism.

Shaykh Hamza said tonight, “We are losing the message of Islam, which is mercy.” And he quoted the Prophet Muhammad as saying, “You will not believe unless you have mercy,” and further explained the Prophet did not mean only mercy to other Muslims but universal mercy to all humanity.

We have, as a religious community, lost our mercy, I think. For every scholar or Muslim representative who condemns the Beslan seige or the beheadings in Iraq, there are two more who hedge and fuss and find a way to justify it all. Suicide bombings and insurgency are not the Islamic way, and we have to do something about it. That is our responsibility. We cannot continue to pretend there’s a good reason or it’s okay because it’s happening in Palestine or Iraq. “The essence of this religion,” said Shaykh Hamza, “is to break the cycles of violence.” Redress is permitted in Islam, but forgiveness is encouraged, and he who forgives today will receive forgiveness from Allah later.

I don’t expect this viewpoint will be very popular at the local masjid, but that’s okay. Shaykh Hamza said something else last night, too: “Our prophet did not stand by his tribe. He stood by truth. … We have an absolute obligation to speak the truth.” That was the theme of his talk — truth at all costs, regardless of how much it might upset us. And the truth of this matter is that we have to step up, we have to speak out, we have to stop tacitly encouraging terrorists by refusing to say out loud what we all know: there is no justification for what they are doing. There is no Islam in what they are doing.

Keep your eyes open, y’all.