Sylph

Finale wrap-up: «Grey's Anatomy»

With so much misery and defeat and no one left to sleep with, has this show's golden goose been cooked?

By Heather Havrilesky

May. 18, 2007 | Cristina Yang does not look good without eyebrows. This is what we learned in Thursday night's "Grey's Anatomy" finale, along with a few other important life lessons: 1) Never put your (seemingly) dying climbing buddy out of his misery with an ax to the head; 2) don't have a baby with your wife if you're in love with your best friend; 3) study hard for your intern exam unless you want to repeat your internship; 4) if the thought of your upcoming wedding makes you ill, you might be making a mistake; and 5) if the thought of your friend's upcoming nuptials makes you ill, you might want to consider going back to therapy.

But those wacky kids on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" don't learn important life lessons very easily, or if they do, they forget them by the next episode. That's why we find Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) going all wishy-washy on us over Cristina Yang's (Sandra Oh) wedding: When there isn't a boulder about to fall on Meredith's head (and there usually is, let's face it), she'll invent one.

Meredith: You marrying Burke restores my faith in me.

Cristina: Oh, I get it. My wedding's about you.

Meredith: Yes.

Not to nit-pick a show whose joys lie in being a big, soapy mess of heartfelt confessions and romantic longings and emotionally brutal twists, but is it really fair to pound home the idea that Meredith is hopelessly self-involved right now, when her mom just died, her stepmom just died, and her long-lost daddy just got drunk and slapped her in the face and blamed her for her stepmom's death? For that matter, is this really the time for Derek (Patrick Dempsey) to lay down the law with Meredith, threatening to dump her and date a pretty girl he met in a bar? Why not dump her the million or so other times that she has wavered and flaked out and second-guessed their love? Why now, when she's (not so clearly) reeling in the wake of a few major disasters?

And then we find out that the pretty girl is a new intern at Seattle Grace who's probably related to Meredith, since her last name is Grey -- another twist that's not all that easy to care about, really, since we've already uncovered a few of Meredith's long-lost relatives and they've all been pretty disappointing. On the other hand, Meredith is at her best when she's pining away, and what better way to pine than over McDreamy dating a hopelessly pretty second cousin or illegitimate sister?

But can we really get invested in another season of pining away?

"Grey's Anatomy" has countless charms -- snappy yet moving dialogue, nice-looking humans, fast-moving story lines. But lately one of those strengths -- those hurtling plotlines -- seems to be killing creator Shonda Rhimes' golden goose. Once Alex (Justin Chambers) has been romantically involved with Izzie (Katherine Heigl), Addison (Kate Walsh) and an amnesiac; George (T.R. Knight) has been in love with Meredith, Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Izzie; Derek has been with Addison and Meredith; Addison has been with Derek, McSteamy (Eric Dane) and Alex, why would we take any of these romances seriously? And, on the other hand, we're supposed to believe that Meredith and McDreamy are the Love of Each Other's Lives, so when either of them hems and haws, it just feels like filibustering.

Similarly, it was clear before Thursday night's finale that Cristina didn't want to marry Burke (Isaiah Washington) -- we've seen way too many examples of how she has surrendered her true self to the relationship and how she's in conflict over settling down in general. So why should we be too bent out of shape if she ends up leaving him at the altar? The promos for the show's finale might as well have blared, "Tune in for the moment when Cristina leaves Burke at the altar!" The only scene that complicated this outcome -- in high "Grey's" style -- was one in which Burke rehearsed his vows in the operating room to Izzie and Addison (which, of course, tipped off that he'd never deliver them):

Burke: I am not optimistic, I am not full of hope. I am sure. I am steady. And I know that I'm a heart man. I take them apart, I put them back together, I hold them in my hands. I am a heart man. So of this, I am sure. You are my partner, my lover, my very best friend. My heart beats for you. And on this day, the day of our wedding, I promise you this: I promise you to lay my heart in the palm of your hands. I promise you me."

As the female doctors and nurses in the room gasp, Burke looks around, then asks, "Too trite? Because I can rewrite it." Finally Addison says, "I think I speak for every woman in this room when I say dump her. Dump Yang, and marry me."

Walsh's crappy spinoff almost made us forget what excellent comic timing she has. Hopefully, if "Private Practice" fails, she can return to Seattle Grace and to the frank demeanor and wry asides that make her scenes a highlight of "Grey's."

Sandra Oh is another highlight. She's fantastic and believable as Cristina, even if, without eyebrows, she looks just like a creature from "Pan's Labyrinth." Her angry deadpan is great for scenes like the one where her mother tells her, "I always feared you were too emotionally stunted to settle down!" It's a testament to Oh's appeal that when Cristina is stalling at the church and Meredith tells her, sternly, to go get her happy ending, we almost want her to march down that aisle, even though we saw this coming for months and we know that getting married will be wrong for her in the long term.

The best scene of the finale was Cristina's unpredictable, manic, half-relieved, half-devastated breakdown post-failed wedding, when she goes home to find Burke gone and then, after screaming at Meredith to help her get out of her binding wedding dress, breaks down sobbing. "Grey's Anatomy" has a deft hand with hard cases -- Cristina, Alex, McSteamy, Bailey, Burke. We care about them, even though we can see they're going to mess up and push people away, over and over again.

But then again, the softies (Izzie, Callie, Meredith, George) are pushing people away, too. In fact, maybe that's the problem here, a pattern that repeats itself in every story we see: Unrequited longing, rising sexual tension, teary-jerky confessional outburst, lonely montage of heartbroken gazing into middle distance while strummy Lilith Fair music plays, confessional outburst No. 2, all of it wrapping up with the Big Breakup or the Big Sexy Reconciliation. Next week, repeat steps one through six and call me in the morning.

"Grey's Anatomy" will offer up a charming, enjoyable diversion even if it stays on its current repetitive course and rides that pony into the sunset. But if Meredith and her friends want their happy ending, then this pony better learn a few new tricks.

I think the article pointed out at some illogical steps in constructing the story, that's why I pasted it here, I don't care if MSNBC person wrote it.

The ‘Grey’s’ we’ve known is so over

End of storylines, relationships in finale gives fans little to look forward to

COMMENTARY

By Andy Dehnart

MSNBC contributor

Updated: 10:02 a.m. ET May 18, 2007

The fourth season of "Grey's Anatomy" will probably begin with an ambiguously single, non-chief of surgery Derek Shepherd finding himself working in a hospital along with an attractive female intern named Grey who he met at a bar the previous evening.

Although the first season also began that way, this new Grey is not Meredith.

In one of the season finale's final scenes, George, having learned that he failed his medical exam, emptied his locker as five new interns walked in, ready to begin the first year on the job. One of them was the same woman who flirted with Derek the previous evening, and she revealed herself to be a character previously mentioned by name but never seen: Lexie Grey, Meredith's half sister.

While echoing the start of its first season, “Grey's Anatomy” will not be returning to where it began after covering a single calendar year in three television seasons. Instead, the show's third-season finale wrapped up existing stories — but in mostly unsatisfying, occasionally depressing, and sometimes illogical ways that will leave the show decidedly changed.

Its major developments all involved the characters rejecting one another, and will alter their lives, giving the interns — and viewers — little to look forward to for their next year.

The first string of rejections came as the result of an attempt to answer one major question: Which of the attending physicians would Chief of Surgery Richard Webber appoint to take his place?

First to be removed from consideration was Mark Sloan, who insisted he really wanted the job despite acting like an all-around jackass most of the time.

Next up was Addison, who had to be rejected not because that's what fit with her character, but so she could move to Los Angeles and star in ABC's new series "Private Practice." Richard conveniently set up her spin-off by telling her, "If you need a job to get your life, you either need a new job, or a new life."

Addison's new life airs Wednesdays at 9 this fall on ABC.

Burke was also turned down because, as Webber told him, "You let me down this year, Preston. ... I want to give you the job — I want to, but I can't." That left Derek, who was actually offered the job that brought him to Seattle in the first place. But he rejected himself. While that may show growth on his part, he didn't really offer an explanation as to why he suddenly no longer desired the job he's been desperately wanting.

Derek's decision also leaves Richard in an awkward position.

Having reconciled with his wife after she nearly died miscarrying their baby, he now is stuck with the job that essentially destroyed their marriage. "You take care of other people's families, and you sacrifice your own," he said at one point.

Seattle Grace without Richard Webber would not be the same, but he was quitting because he devoted too much of his life to work.

Now, he either needs to reject his wife and life again, or leave the hospital, which seems like an even unlikelier option.

In other rejection-related developments, some of them incomprehensible or out-of-character, Bailey lost the chief resident position to Callie, perhaps because Webber wanted to save Bailey, but still making little sense.

Alex rebuffed Ava, whose husband's appearance prompted her to realize she was ready for a new beginning. Alex had apparently moved on — or calloused himself as a result of her earlier rejection — as just a day or so before, he'd clearly fallen for her.

George failed his intern exam, maybe because he spent too much time hooking up with and pining for his roommates this year, at least when they weren't pining for him. Meanwhile, his wife, Callie, suddenly and bizarrely declared to George that she was hormonal and wanted to have a baby.

Because smart people know that babies fix bad marriages, George immediately did his part to help conceive a child. That left Callie to coldly but finally dismiss Izzie with 12 words: “I was named chief resident; plus, we decided to have a baby.” That will probably have little effect on Izzie, who earlier refused to give up and told George, “I'm in love with you, George, and I hope you're in love with me, too.”

He didn't acknowledge any reciprocal feelings, having apparently been convinced by one of “Grey's Anatomy”'s convenient, always amusing, and flawlessly constructed metaphors for a character's personal life masquerading as a medical problem.

A mountain climber with an axe in his skull “panicked,” George said, and tried to climb down despite being attached to his fellow climbers. “You have every right to turn back if you're scared,” George declared. Without thinking, Derek replied “No, you don't. You choose to climb a mountain, you can't change your mind in the middle of a climb.”

Preston Burke, however, did exactly that. In fact, he changed his mind in the middle of his wedding. After months of pressing Cristina to get married, he finally realized that he was asking her to do something she didn't want to do; while she insisted otherwise, the wedding was off. “I know you don't want to come (down the aisle) but you'll come anyway because you love me. And if I loved you ... if I did, I wouldn't be up there waiting for you. I would be letting you go,” he said, and then disappeared.

Calling off the wedding might have made sense, but leaving her entirely? Minutes earlier he was practicing his truly touching vows, leaving every person in the operating room in tears.

Apparently, he had time after that procedure to surgically remove his feelings for Cristina and deposit them in a biohazard waste container.

His departure and rejection of Cristina led her to have an ambiguous breakdown in front of Meredith. “He's gone,” Cristina said, fighting to get out of her wedding dress. “I'm free. Dammit.”

Derek, meanwhile, didn't want to be free of Meredith, but she seemed willing to reject him by not explicitly rejecting him. He told her, "I do love you, don't you see? ... You're the love of my life. I can't leave you. But you're constantly leaving me." He begged her, "If you're not in this, please, just end it. ... Put me out of my misery." Meredith responded in the moment by simply avoiding the topic, saying only that she had to go to the wedding.

Once there, after Burke changed his mind and called off the wedding, Meredith was left to deliver the news to the assembled guests. "It's over. You can all go home," she said. At once she was talking to the assembled guests and to Derek. "It's over. So over," she said.

So, she also seemed to be saying, is the "Grey's Anatomy" that we've known.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

Bellisario to leave 'NCIS'

Showrunner exits 'JAG' spinoff

By JOSEF ADALIAN

There's finally some buzz surrounding one of TV's least buzzed-about hits -- but it's not the kind CBS Par Network TV execs were seeking.

Studio confirmed over the weekend that "NCIS" showrunner Donald P. Bellisario is leaving the drama series he created. Move follows a report last month by TVGuide.com of tension between the producer and series star Mark Harmon.

Bellisario's showrunning duties will likely be taken over by Chas. Floyd Johnson and head writer Shane Brennan.

"NCIS" is the sort of CBS warhorse that does yeoman's work for the Eye, generating solid tune-in in a tough Tuesday night timeslot opposite "American Idol." Skein was a spinoff of the equally unsexy "JAG."

CBS Par prexy David Stapf issued a statement praising the "creativity, vision and talents" of Bellisario.

"He not only built a top-rated show but a great producing team that provides terrific continuity for the years ahead," he said. "With 'JAG' and 'NCIS,' Don has a great tradition of success with the network and our studio. We look forward to developing his next generation of projects."

Bellisario is in the middle of a multiyear overall deal with CBS Par and is said to be working on a pair of possible projects for the studio.

ABC's 'Anatomy' widens

Two-hour episode brings in big ratings

By RICK KISSELL

A "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff is looking like a sure thing after Thursday's two-hour episode of the ABC medical drama -- introducing characters from the forthcoming show -- delivered impressive ratings.

The Alphabet won't announce its fall sked until next week, but it would be a shock if the still-untitled spinoff (known in some circles as "Private Practice") doesn't make it to air.

On Thursday, "Grey's Anatomy" averaged a 9.1 rating/24 share in adults 18-49 and 21.23 million viewers overall from 9-11 p.m. with an episode that alternated between current storylines on the medical skein and those involving Kate Walsh, whose character, Addison, traveled down to Los Angeles to meet up with med school friends. Walsh will be joined on the spinoff by, among others, Taye Diggs, Tim Daly and Amy Brenneman.

"Grey's Anatomy" peaked in the 9:30 half-hour (9.3/24 in 18-49), but its extension into the 10 o'clock hour did plenty of damage to the competish. NBC's "ER" (3.1/8 in 18-49, 7.78m) and CBS' season finale of "Shark" (3.1/8 in 18-49, 12.50m) were both down about 15% week to week.

The expanded "Grey's Anatomy" gave ABC its best demo delivery with entertainment programming in the Thursday 9-11 p.m. time period in seven years.

Earlier in the evening, "Survivor: Fiji" won at 8 for CBS (4.6/14 in 18-49, 13.74m), with ABC's "Ugly Betty" a solid second (3.6/11, 10.68m), drawing its best numbers in 11 weeks.

CBS won Friday, led by "Ghost Whisperer" (prelim 2.5/10 in 18-49, 9.2 million). Also of note on the night: NBC's "Law & Order" -- whose status for an 18th season next fall remains up in the air -- scored a rare demo victory at 10 (prelim 2.6/9 in 18-49, 8.9 million).

Saturday went to ABC courtesy of the net preem of "Meet the Fockers" (prelim 2.1/7 in 18-49, 6.4 million).

Earlier in the day, NBC's coverage of horseracing's Kentucky Derby (5-6:45 p.m. ET) averaged an 8.3 overnight household rating/18 share in Nielsen's metered markets -- up 12% from last year and tying the best delivery in 15 years.

Read the full article at:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117964369.html

Mihalis Hatzigiannis Heria psila (Hands Up)

Δεν ξέρω μάτια μου τι θα πει αγάπη,

όλοι μια λέξη λένε κι είν αρκετή.

Μαζί σου έμαθα να ψάχνω αυτό το κάτι

που κάνει δυο κορμιά να αντέχουνε μαζί.

Χέρια ψηλά κι όλα τα φτάνω,

έλα να πάμε απ'την αγάπη πιο πάνω.

Χέρια ψηλά δως μου να ανέβω.

Σ'ένα θεό,σε σένα τώρα πιστεύω.

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έλα να πάμε απ'την αγάπη πιο πάνω.

Χέρια ψηλά κι είμαι μαζί σου,

έτσι κερδίζω στη ζωή τη ζωή σου.

Όλος ο κόσμος γύρω λέει σ'αγαπάω

όμως για μας δε φτάνει μόνο ένα φιλί.

Μαζί σου έμαθα τα ρήματα να σπάω,

δες πόσα σ'αγαπώ φωνάζει η σιωπή.

Χέρια ψηλά κι όλα τα φτάνω,

έλα να πάμε απ'την αγάπη πιο πάνω.

Χέρια ψηλά δως μου να ανέβω.

Σ'ένα θεό,σε σένα τώρα πιστεύω.

Χέρια ψηλά κι όλα τα φτάνω,

έλα να πάμε απ'την αγάπη πιο πάνω.

Χέρια ψηλά κι είμαι μαζί σου,

έτσι κερδίζω στη ζωή τη ζωή σου.

And Natasa Theodoridou Eho mia agkalia.