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Dec. 23rd, 2020 04:35 pmGrey's Anatomy Season 17
It's been emotionally difficult to watch the new season, which has been tackling the pandemic head on from the perspective of the hospital workers. This writing and acting has been very good,though. The season started with a two hour episode I had to break up into twenty minute sections to watch, I couldn't deal with any longer. Watching beloved characters having to cope with so much death and pain and knowing that people I care about having been doing the same thing for months was hard. Grey's has always supported itself on a careful mixture of tragedy and whimsy, but this season has been understandably low on the whimsy. The only really funny moment in the season opener was Jo asking Jackson for sex, which I thought was hilarious.
Since then the show has settled into its new groove, which has been about healing emotional wounds rather than trying to open new ones. Jo trying to get over Alex, Richard and Catherine reconciling, Levi and Nico trying to work things out, Teddy trying to make amends to Owen and Tom, Maggie trying to be a good girlfriend in a long distance relationship, Amy and Link re-figuring out where they stand with each other as new parents. The show seems reluctant to introduce any drama that could overwhelm the real life drama of treating COVID, which is understandable. I've been liking these storylines, they're well told and believable in a way that sometimes Grey's slips away from.
And the last few episodes have dealt with doctors getting COVID and the course of their illness, which is a whole new level of difficult to approach emotionally. Especially when you combine it with the external knowledge that this is Ellen Pompeo's last season, there's a very real chance that characters I like are going to die of COVID. The plot armor is, so to speak, off. The collision between that and COVID is jarring.
I've written a bunch about how Grey's is a show that is obviously, explicitly driven by external dictates like sweeps and season finales, and it is strange and unsettling to see that metafictionality intersect with the real world like this. But there's also something comforting about the distancing from reality created by watching fictional characters dealing with the pandemic. I might be sad if one of these characters dies, but that sadness will be nothing like the real sadness we've all felt this year as the pandemic has affected us and those around us.
It's been emotionally difficult to watch the new season, which has been tackling the pandemic head on from the perspective of the hospital workers. This writing and acting has been very good,though. The season started with a two hour episode I had to break up into twenty minute sections to watch, I couldn't deal with any longer. Watching beloved characters having to cope with so much death and pain and knowing that people I care about having been doing the same thing for months was hard. Grey's has always supported itself on a careful mixture of tragedy and whimsy, but this season has been understandably low on the whimsy. The only really funny moment in the season opener was Jo asking Jackson for sex, which I thought was hilarious.
Since then the show has settled into its new groove, which has been about healing emotional wounds rather than trying to open new ones. Jo trying to get over Alex, Richard and Catherine reconciling, Levi and Nico trying to work things out, Teddy trying to make amends to Owen and Tom, Maggie trying to be a good girlfriend in a long distance relationship, Amy and Link re-figuring out where they stand with each other as new parents. The show seems reluctant to introduce any drama that could overwhelm the real life drama of treating COVID, which is understandable. I've been liking these storylines, they're well told and believable in a way that sometimes Grey's slips away from.
And the last few episodes have dealt with doctors getting COVID and the course of their illness, which is a whole new level of difficult to approach emotionally. Especially when you combine it with the external knowledge that this is Ellen Pompeo's last season, there's a very real chance that characters I like are going to die of COVID. The plot armor is, so to speak, off. The collision between that and COVID is jarring.
I've written a bunch about how Grey's is a show that is obviously, explicitly driven by external dictates like sweeps and season finales, and it is strange and unsettling to see that metafictionality intersect with the real world like this. But there's also something comforting about the distancing from reality created by watching fictional characters dealing with the pandemic. I might be sad if one of these characters dies, but that sadness will be nothing like the real sadness we've all felt this year as the pandemic has affected us and those around us.