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March 25, 2005
TV WEEKEND | 'GREY'S ANATOMY'
Tales of Sex and Surgery
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

ow that "Sex and the City" is off the air and "ER" is on its last legs,
ABC has concocted a drama that tries to be a little bit of both: on
"Grey's Anatomy," alluring young interns compete to become surgeons -
"Sex and the City Hospital."

And that is not a bad combination. In this age of "Desperate
Housewives" and "The O.C.," it is refreshing to see a television show
whose heroines aspire to meaningful work as well as meaningless sex.
Certainly that seems to be the vocation of Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen
Pompeo), who narrates the series in a soft, Carrie Bradshawesque
voice-over. In the premiere episode Sunday night, Meredith wakes up,
callously tosses out the handsome stranger she picked up at a bar the
night before and races to her first day at Seattle Grace Hospital. Her
one-night stand, of course, turns out to be Derek Shepherd (Patrick
Dempsey), a surgeon and her boss.

Medical shows are making a comeback after years when "ER" was the only
place to enjoy a gushing kidney transplant. They are a prime-time
perennial: like crime shows, hospital dramas are one of the few
plausible backdrops for life-and-death crises, adrenaline-driven action
and lots of gore (though it is a credit to the writers of "Desperate
Housewives" that each week they manage to cram all that into a suburban
cul-de-sac).

Television doctors also hold a special appeal in these days of
insurance-driven treatment and H.M.O. diagnoses: they indulge the
fantasy that physicians are brilliant risk-takers who defy the system
and pay attention to the patient, much the way that "CSI"-style shows
feed the delusion that civil servants are zealous brainiacs who never
take vacations.

"Scrubs," an NBC sitcom, began in 2001, and this year two other
hospital dramas have popped up on prime time. "Medical Investigation"
on NBC seeks to be a "CSI" for living victims: a crack team from the
National Institutes of Health identifies mysterious symptoms and stamps
out scary epidemics. That show is painfully earnest and a bit of a
bore. Fox does better with "House," a show whose hero, Dr. Gregory
House (Hugh Laurie), is a malevolent Marcus Welby: each week he
crankily ferrets out the hidden cause of a patient's deadly,
unexplained symptoms while terrorizing the patient's family and
browbeating his young acolytes.

"Grey's Anatomy" is a Girl Power version of "ER," focusing as much on
the interns' love lives and career ambitions as it does on the
patients' treatment. It is an unsatirical update on "Ally McBeal," and
has a similar sensibility to "The American Embassy," a Fox drama about
an American woman who escapes a bad relationship by moving to London to
work as a diplomat. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the executive
producers of "Grey's Anatomy," James D. Parriott, was a creator of that
show. (Fox pulled "The American Embassy" after a few episodes.)

Mostly, however, the female interns on "Grey's Anatomy" are a
postfeminist version of the heroines of Rona Jaffe's 1958 novel, "The
Best of Everything." Instead of being torn between career and marriage,
these bright young things agonize over which specialty to pursue:
cardiovascular surgery or neurosurgery. (Romance, like take-out pizza,
is consumed on the run.)

Surgery is known as "the game," and it is the interns' obsessive quest
to scrub in and get their surgical gloves bloodied. "The game,"
Meredith says in a portentous, if inane, voice-over. "They say that a
person either has what it takes to play the game, or they don't."
(These must be the same people who say "Good things come in small
packages" and "Beauty is as beauty does.")

On her first, terrifying 48-hour shift, Meredith bonds with other
freshly minted doctors who are as hazed and overworked as West Point
cadets: Isobel (Izzie) Stevens (Katherine Heigl), an ethereal blond
former lingerie model known to her peers as "Dr. Model," who is
immediately assigned dozens of rectal exams by her scornful bosses; and
Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh, "Sideways"), a ferociously ambitious and
hard-edged intern who always seems an inch away from smashing her
helmet into some miscreant's skull.

Two male interns hover around the female threesome: George O'Malley (T.
R. Knight), a sweet, goofy nerd who becomes their honorary sister, and
Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), an arrogant, bullying cad who is the
intern everybody loves to hate.

All five are kept in line by Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), a
resident so fierce and unwelcoming she is known as "the Nazi." Dr.
Bailey's cardinal rule is not to be awakened unless a patient is in
extremis. ("Next time you wake me," she hisses at Izzie, "he'd better
be so close to dead there's a tag on his toe.")

There are no token blacks on "Grey's Anatomy." The three top surgeons
who rule the interns with princely authority are all African-Americans,
and that sign of social advancement is presented as a given, without
fanfare or comment. Similarly, female doctors seem to outnumber the
men, and nobody on the show finds that remarkable.

It turns out that Meredith has a reason for picking up strangers in
bars: she has a secret that keeps her wary of commitment and ambivalent
about her career choice. Her mother is a famous surgeon who recently
quit and left town. Meredith does not tell anyone that the legendary
Dr. Grey actually has Alzheimer's, is living in a nearby nursing home
and no longer always recognizes her own daughter. Her mother was a
cold, brilliant workaholic; she does not remember Meredith but lights
up at the name of a scrub nurse who worked at her side for years.

Izzie has less success keeping her secret: on her first days on the
ward, sexy photos she did for a glossy magazine race through the
hospital faster than strep throat. She explains that modeling paid her
medical school bills, but even some patients are wary. A man scheduled
for prostate surgery refuses to be treated by a woman he last saw in a
bustier and thong.

Ms. Oh steals every scene as Cristina, cynical and so crudely ambitious
she appalls even her hardened superiors. While Izzie keeps a mournful
vigil over a breathing but brain-dead patient, Cristina wishes he would
hurry up and die so she can assist at the organ-harvesting surgery.

"Grey's Anatomy" marks the return of women in white coats after a long
dry spell. And even viewers who don't track feminist trends on
television may enjoy the sight of a quivering liver being lifted out
for transplant and tenderly placed in a thermal picnic cooler.

If you enjoyed the medical textbook, you'll love the television show.

'Grey's Anatomy'

ABC, Sunday night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Shonda Rhimes, creator and executive producer; Mark Gordon, James D.
Parriott and Betsy Beers, executive producers.

WITH: Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey), Patrick Dempsey (Derek Shepherd),
Sandra Oh (Cristina Yang), Isaiah Washington (Preston Burke), Katherine
Heigl (Isobel Stevens), Justin Chambers (Alex Karev), T. R. Knight
(George O'Malley), Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey), James Pickens Jr.
(Richard Webber) and Callum Blue (Viper).

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