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Meredith Grey looks awfully good... for a zombie
One of the reasons why I stopped reviewing Grey's Anatomy was because that it just plain tired me out. With so many characters and storylines to keep track of, it became very difficult to cover them all in my reviews. Another reason was that the increasingly soapy melodrama was wearing me down, a notion that was confirmed to me last week when George and Izzie drunkenly slept together at the end of the episode (Though it did give birth to Jonathan's clever use of the name "Gizzie").But what also got to me about the show was its complete lack of medical realism. Yes, I know it's a TV show and it doesn't have to be hyper-real, but in the day and age of ER and reality medical shows on TLC, you need to come somewhat closer to medical realism than, say, Marcus Welby, M.D. did 35 years ago.
The last straw on this front was when I saw Meredith Grey at the beginning of last week's episode. Despite the fact that she was clinically dead for what seemed like hours, she came out of it not only OK, but prettier than ever!
Listen, I'm not a doctor, so I don't know all the medical case history of the known universe. But, I do know a few things, namely that in most cases a person who's been clinically dead as long as Meredith was -- even "cold and dead," which was what she was -- wakes up and has at least some lingering problems afterwards. I mean, it could be the smallest thing... a tremor, an eye twitch, a limp, memory problems, a sudden preference for half-sour pickles... it could be anything. But usually there is some consequence to having your brain deprived of blood flow for so long.
But at the beginning of this episode, which I'd imagine takes place a week or two after Meredith woke up from her coma, she not only looks none the worse for wear, she looks even better than she did before she got kicked into Puget Sound. No consequences, no lingering effects. In fact, she was almost as self-absorbed than she was before the coma; her stepmother had to almost drag her to dinner with her father, and she had no problems spilling the beans about Callie's wealth to Izzie, the one person that George didn't want to hear that news. So, not only did Mer not have any physical effects, she didn't even really experience that "new perspective on life" epiphany that most people who've come back from the dead usually experience.
Wouldn't it have been more interesting for Shonda Rhimes and company to explore how the coma has affected Meredith, and by association, everyone around her? Maybe she couldn't come back to work right away, or maybe she could have lost the part of her memory that would remind her why she was in love with Derek. The possibilities are endless. But yet the writers took the easy way out and made it as if nothing traumatic or life-altering ever happened to Meredith.
Maybe the writers will surprise me and start exploring these issues tonight and in subsequent episodes. But I doubt it. Shonda's too busy figuring out how to get everyone in bed with each other than to explore more compelling stories like this. It's a shame, really; the show can still explore these kind of stories and still maintain its light tone with the other storylines. But I don't think it'll ever go in that direction.
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