There’s something about the cardiothoracic surgeons at Seattle Grace Hospital, TV’s number one medical hotspot for horny doctors who continually make terrible decisions. They’re fatally attached to their running shoes, beg their girlfriends to commit only to drop them when they do, gay people are their kryptonite and their behind the scenes drama completely trumps Grey’s Anatomy, the soap-opera show they appear in.
At the end of the third season, the super-talented Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) recovered from a serious injury after indulging in a series of boneheaded (possibly criminal) moves before dumping his awesome but pain-in-the-ass fiance at the altar and running so far away, only his mother and a photograph in the newspaper ever came back.
The behind the scenes impetus for this messed-up storyline, which unforgivably landed my beloved Christina Yang in a season-long funk, was an off-screen shouting match between Washington and co-star Patrick Dempsey. You can catch up on the drama here.
This season, his replacement, the super-talented Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith), after spending much of last season as a complete asshole with few redeeming qualities other than (allegedly) her brain, finally has a genuine moment when she falls for her amazing colleague in the ortho department and realizes she’s as gay as can be, only to get into a car and… drop off the face of the earth? Join the lesbian moon colony? Something, anyway.
Why? Well, scuttlebutt has it the two ladies were doing their job too well and TPTB freaked out when they realized the lesbians on the screen weren’t being all airy-fairy lovey dovey “aren’t we humans too so let’s philosophize” but actually getting into the nitty gritties of researching ways and means to get better – in bed! With sex and everything. And neither one of them was struck by lightning or scheduled to die of a painful lingering disease either! Scandalous.
I find it ironic that I tuned in last week for the first time all season and found myself drawn towards Erica Hahn as a character which is another first. In fact, her “I saw leaves” monologue made me re-consider my decision to strike Grey’s Anatomy from my list of must-watch shows this fall – only to find out that it might well have been that very monologue that got Brooke Smith fired.
So let me get this straight (if you’ll pardon the pun) -
1. They fire Isaiah Washington because he’s too homophobic for their show.
2. They hire Smith to replace him.
3. The show sucks for various reason of which Hahn is only one minor part.
4. Shonda Rhimes re-evaluates during the writer’s strike and comes back with what she says are better ideas, including the Hahn-Torres love story.
5. Smith sells the angle much better than anything else she’s done on the show.
6. They immediately fire her.
But hey, bisexuals are apparently okay. Hahn’s love interest Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) is still on the show after she discovered she sees leaves and flowers, and now Grey‘s fans can look forward to Melissa George in the coming weeks as another bisexual character. I believe she may or may not have hooked up with Meredith in the past. Which is all very funny because I believe Christina was supposed to be the bisexual character in a season 3 storyline that got pulled to make space for Roger Rees.
Can we get a Grey’s Anatomy reality show? I think I’d watch that. Can’t be worse than season 4.
