Did Grey's Anatomy: The Musical Event Sing?

Well, folks, I wouldn’t have seen myself here for this particular purpose in a million years, but brace yourselves, Interweb and TV snobs alike, because I’m about to rave review the crap out of Grey’s Anatomy. Yes, that show. The very same melodramatic, repetitive, monologue-laden Grey’s Anatomy that, in an era when the preponderance of musical TV seems to be at an all-time high, managed to pool its collective creative resources and put out a really fine hour of television and the show's single best episode since last season's finale, in my newly humble opinion.

Viewers had been waiting for this musical event with varying degrees of anticipatory glee. Me, I wasn’t expecting very much, both because Grey’s is not my favorite thing on TV and because the musical episode is a feat many shows have done before to varying degrees of success. (I loved the Scrubs musical and, in spite of my better judgment, still enjoy Glee. And to all you Buffy fanatics out there: relax; the only reason I’m not extolling it here is because I haven’t yet gotten around to watching the entire series. Someday, fellow Whedonites. Someday.) Perhaps that’s why I was so blown away by “Song Beneath the Song,” which succeeded in the added challenges of being a non-cheesy musical chapter in a drama and fitting into the larger-scale continuity of the show. In other words, it wasn't a standalone.

Granted, not all the musical interludes made sense within the framework of the episode, in that they were supposed to be a projection of Callie’s damaged brain/subconscious even though neither Callie nor astral Callie were present for all of them. Still, the production struck a good balance of reality and dream, and I liked the way the music was integrated, at times being superimposed with real dialogue. And I really liked the way the episode stayed true to one of the show’s trademarks—characters overly repeating certain lines—but this time switched it up by interrupting those repetitions with the musical sequences. Finally, I liked how this detail was mirrored in the final scene, with Callie’s first words upon waking being her acceptance of Arizona’s marriage proposal, a continuation of her earlier speech in the car fantasy.

Musically, though it was obvious that most of the cast members aren’t singers, I think the gang did a decent job of faking it for a night. And none was better (or more featured) than Sara Ramirez, who was luminous and fierce and totally in her element—clearly, that Tony was well deserved—which was fitting, since the episode was narrated from her character’s perspective. Her version of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” that kicked off the episode had me so enraptured that I had a stronger-than-usual urge to smack Owen Hunt when he cut in for the second stanza. All in all, it might not have been a perfect musical episode, but it was a great Grey’s Anatomy episode, unusually well written and well directed.

Here were some of my favorite moments (I’ll fight the urge to recount the episode scene by scene):

• The slow-motion sequence. Can someone explain to me how Callie’s lip movements were slowed down yet in perfect sync to the song recording?

• The “How to Save a Life” number. Sure, the famous Fray song is a huge cliché, but it happened to fit in really well with what was happening on-screen.

• Arizona saving the baby. It worked out perfectly, her being the only one of the Callie/Mark/Arizona parental trio to be legally allowed to treat the baby, and by doing so, carving for herself the much-coveted connection to said baby. Biology, be damned—Dr. Robbins just became a mother. Well played, Grey’s.

• Callie belting out “The Story.” Ramirez’s emotive singing, pitch-perfect acting and vocal power made this cover more than worthy of Brandi Carlile’s original rendition.

What did you love about “Song Beneath the Song”? What did you hate? And how do you feel about this ever-popular musical television trend?

P.S. How awful would it be of me to say "April Fools!" right now?

Five Shows I Would Cancel

 

I am sad. I just realized that Running Wilde has been canceled, making this the third Mitch Hurwitz show to be prematurely killed by Fox, following Arrested Development in 2006 and the lesser-known and even shorter-lived animated series Sit Down, Shut Up in 2008. Some people never learn. Wilde admittedly got off to a rocky, inconsistent start, but it showed promise and was funny in that absurd way mildly reminiscent of Arrested. Besides, I will watch almost anything Will Arnett touches. I won’t mourn it for very long, but this cancellation did get me thinking about shows that have truly reached their expiration dates and should be put out of their misery, along with the poor saps who would otherwise still wish they we knew how to quit them. Here are my top five, in no particular order:

1. Desperate Housewives

Yes, I still watch this, cue the shaking of a thousand heads, but judging by the fact that I’ve been writing this post while the latest episode has been playing in the background, it’s obvious that this show’s guilty pleasure flame has fully been extinguished along with its humor, originality, and feminine appeal. The conflicts have been getting recycled for the past two or three seasons, and when they aren’t, the complications the writers think up are embarrassingly outlandish. I mean, how much villainy can take place on the same damn street in a gated community of East Borington, Middle America? I know that’s the schtick here, but it has gotten so seriously old that I’d rather watch Project Runway. The timeline of this show is already so screwed up that current events are supposed to be taking place 10 years or so after the first season’s; let’s not try to go for Desperate Housewives: The Golden Years here.

2. Big Love

It’s hard for me to go back to a time when I thoroughly enjoyed and obsessively followed this show. Over the years it’s been pretty fascinating to observe the evolution of the three “sister wives,” the compelling stories of myriad supporting characters, and sometimes, the humanity of even the vilest of the lot. The high point came circa Season 3, but ever since then I’ve had an increasingly harder time becoming invested in the characters, in large part because the central one, the polygamous patriarch himself, has not seemed to develop past his general blandness. Moreover, driven by Bill’s political aspirations, the complications for his family have shifted from the private to the public sphere, where before, what made the show interesting was its focus on the secrecy of it all and the intricately nuanced questions of morality, freedom, and faith that emanated therefrom. By bringing the Henricksons’s polygamy out in the open this season, the writers have provided nothing more than a deus ex machina device to bring about obstacles and perhaps, in the end, the family’s destruction; I don’t know about others, but I would much rather have seen these relationships unravel from the inside out.

3. The Office

This is actually really difficult because I still enjoy this show a good amount. Still, ever since the whole Jim and Pam will-they-won’t-they mystery has been off the table, we’ve been treated to a gradual decline into sameness over the years. Now that Steve Carrell is leaving and taking the sublime character Michael Scott with him, I have doubts that the Dunder Mifflin gang will retain its viewership and special something that made it one of the great comedy wild cards of the last decade. Let’s not give this show a chance to get stale and accept that it may be time to resign it and allow its successor, Parks and Recreation aka the other NBC documentary-style sitcom, to really flourish.

4. One Tree Hill

OK, I’ve never watched an entire episode, but based on what I’ve seen of it on The Soup, this show neeeeeds to end, like, yesterday.

5. Grey’s Anatomy

This one is really starting to grasp at straws now, as evidenced by the parade of characters, each of them more attractive than the last, that have made their way on and off the show since its premiere, and I’m not just referring to those few forced and voluntary resignations that take place every now and then. The problem is that the only new thing that ever happens among the Seattle Gracies is sex with someone different, and now that most of the possible couplings have already happened, the producers keep introducing new players to an already numerous ensemble cast in hopes of creating new stories. It’s more than a little desperate. Who the eff is Lucy Fields and why should I care about her… other than the obligatory sob story that every character in a Shonda Rhimes production seems to be walking around with (also see: Practice, Private and Map, Off the)? Since the three central couples are now well-established and happy together, why not just wrap it up neatly and call it a day? Give MerDer a damn baby, Alex a non-crazy girlfriend, and Lexie an age-appropriate boyfriend, and get out with a shred of dignity before it’s too late.  

Have I missed anything? What other shows are mercilessly keeping us hooked in spite of our better judgment?

My Rock Bottom

 

Just when you thought the red rose couldn't be a bigger cliche...

Unlike my colleague here at our nifty little blog, one of my resolutions for 2011 is to watch more TV, if for no other reason than to accumulate fodder for said blog. (Parenthetically, it will be interesting to see how well this goal will gel with res number two: lose thirfteenleven pounds.) Of course, given the amount of TV I already watch, this decision has forced me in many ways to dip dangerously close to the bottom of the barrel.

Last week I tuned in for the season premiere of The Bachelor, fueled only by my ongoing mission to find the perfect show on which to do weekly recaps. (Spoiler alert: the search continues.) I was hoping the “controversy” associated with this season would provide some mild analytical twists, while the show’s usual antics would lend themselves perfectly to jokes and ridicule. As it turns out, the scandal surrounding this year’s bachelor is hardly enough to make a few ripples in the show’s monotony, let alone an actual wave. In a nutshell, bachelor Brad Womack catapulted himself to notoriety during his first stint on the show back in 2007, by brazenly rejecting both of the final two future Mrs. Womack hopefuls. The nerve.

I stuck around through the end of the episode, if only to relish the inherent hilarity in the fresh batch of women having their “words” with the dude who deigned to screw with the show’s promise of a televised proposal. Because, as all of us card-carrying Ladies often ask ourselves, what’s the point in dating a man while sabotaging other women if he doesn’t give you a big shiny rock in the end? I mean, to not be ready to propose marriage to someone after six whole weeks of dating in a variety of fantasy scenarios? What kind of a dick move is that?! And OMG, like, who would even choose being alone over being with a girl who wears evening dresses and fancy eye shadow every day? Enjoy your TV-lit frozen dinners and bubbleless baths, douchebag!

Of course, the solidarity was quickly abandoned as, true to form, the women’s baby-making instincts kicked in and they began fighting each other in earnest for Brad’s sperm attention. Ugh! I should have known I couldn’t watch a show whose sheer premise fundamentally disgusts me. My favorite moment, if I can call it that, came when one of the bachelorettes, mere moments after meeting him, slapped Brad square across the face “just to get it out of the way,” prompting him to utter the words, “Now I like you even more,” or some such. I get it; who doesn’t love a little abuse now and then, am I right? The whole episode, really, was a rubbernecker’s wet dream, from Brad's awkward confrontation with the two spurned ladies of yore to the gratuitous footage of his Changed Self, a change that—if the circumference of his upper torso is any indication—took place largely in that most sacred sanctuary of dudedom: The Gym. (To be completely honest, this was the first time I’d ever been jealous of a man’s nipple pertness.) What really amused me throughout the whole thing was the level of righteous indignation, albeit short-lived, shown by some of the new women on behalf of the old, rejected ones. I mean, this guy is practically a pariah for making a decision than any rational human in the real (read: unsimulated) world would applaud. It boggles the mind, it does.  

Fortunately, the second show I discovered on my new year’s quest fared much better. In fact, Grey’s Anatomy is actually, sort of, in a way, good. This is a show I had tried out when it first started, back when Scrubs was in its heyday and doctor shows in general were all the rage, but I abandoned it shortly thereafter due to both my general inability to suspend that pesky disbelief and my fear of being associated with that very specific demographic of doe-eyed womanfolk. (Full disclosure: I’ve really been revisiting this show since last season’s finale, which I tuned into after being exposed to endless ABC promos and which turned out to be a positively gripping two hours of television.)

I’m not saying it’s on par with Mad Men or Breaking Bad (seriously, did the AMC execs make some Faustian-type deal back in 2007?), but Grey’s Anatomy is pretty solid, not-completely-ridiculous entertainment. I am also shameless enough to admit that the collective hotness of the cast is likely doing wonders toward helping me forgive those long, impassioned speeches that creator Shonda Rhimes is known for. At any rate, there are some good bloody moments in this show. For example, even though I could have done with less repetitive dialogue, I was totally transfixed when Meredith called out Derek in the OR last week. That scene surprised me, and I was definitely not expecting this show to ever be able to sneak up on me like that. And then there are those awesome shots of the Space Needle between scenes? Sold!

Look at how hot they are!

But, like Sir Isaac Newton once postulated, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every awesome moment on Grey’s, there’s an equally cheesy one, too. Sure, you might witness a wrenching and plausible exchange between newly-broken-up Drs. Torres and Robbins, but a mere few minutes later you will be cringing through a sappy and clichéd reunion of estranged BFFs Meredith and Christina, set to the tune of the worst '80s Top Gun music I’ve heard so far in this millennium. There’s a good chance you’ll be compelled to nod emphatically through a scene that speaks super true to the harsh realities of post-traumatic stress, but faster than you can say “sassy black lady,” out comes Dr. Bailey summoning her inner Scarlett O’Hara (after the glamour years) to literally look up into the heavens and dem-ay-and—raised fist and all—that God return the life into a patient’s body, hammering home the point that the writers have been bending over backwards to illustrate since Episode 1: that when Miranda Bailey speaks, folks listen, deities included.

Personally I’m thankful for the corny moments because they keep me grounded and a safe distance away from wanting to think this show makes for some sort of brilliant, groundbreaking television. Still, fitting somewhere between the guilty pleasures and the eagerly anticipated must-sees, Grey’s has wedged itself pretty comfortably in my long list of followed programming.  

What are some other shows I should watch and/or recap? Help this tellyphile meet her New Year’s resolutions by leaving lots of comments. Weight loss tips unwelcome.

This Is Huddy Do It

This post contains spoilers about the Season 6 finale of House, but it was three weeks ago, so you're probably OK.

Watching Drs. House and Cuddy kiss—for real—was damn satisfying on the season finale of House a few weeks ago. So satisfying, in fact, that it instantly got me asking, first, “What’s wrong with this picture?” and second, “How jaded am I that I would question a lovely scene like this?” Not to mention the way it was perfectly emblematic of the ideal romantic partnership—both parties sacrificed, gave, and took equally during those few minutes. That it also happened to bring to fruition a six-year-long foreplay session was just icing on the cake.

But then I figured it out: what that moment triggered within me was the recognition that a kiss like that had somehow become a completely foreign concept on television. That elusive je ne sais quoi I was struggling to put my finger on was the presence of romance. Pardon the cliché, but it has to be said: TV romance is (nearly) dead. Sure, we still have the cutesy hookups of new and old sitcoms like Cougar Town and How I Met Your Mother to fall back on, as well as the always interchangeable, always manipulated screw-lationships of Grey’s Anatomy, but as far as serious, mature programming goes, the romance dial is essentially stuck on one position: the sweaty, carnal, envelope-pushing, checking-behind-you-for-grandmother’s-whereabouts fuck fests of the wonder that is cable television. (The backyard scene on United States of Tara from the beginning of this season comes to mind.)

What happened to buying a gal dinner first? What happened to affection? Emotional intimacy, anyone? Nothing tugs at the heartstrings anymore. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it makes me too much of a girl to demand some occasional wooing in my nightly viewing. I mean, enough with these borderline rape-y, bend-her-over-a-table-while-heaving-threats “love” scenes—yes, Weeds, I’m talking to you. I love cable programming as much as the next person, but sometimes I really wonder if a misogynist writer didn’t sneak his way onto the Showtime team. It’s like, we get it: it’s all just biology and there’s nothing really sacred about two people coming together physically. Except… it’s not, and there is.

These shows, while well-crafted and cleverly penned, appear to lack a basic belief in love. If love is the higher power, they are the atheists of TV programming, endlessly attempting to convince their audience of the idiocy of romance by depicting increasingly depraved sex scenes more reminiscent of animalistic mating rituals than expressions of human desire. While many such scenes can be funny/charming/real/necessary in context, they nearly always point back to that ol’ bodily function—no, not shitting—sex (although they sure make it hard to distinguish between the importance of the two). I have no beef with sex, but I’m sick of seeing it get reduced to nothing more than an urge. Yes, lust is a real and beautiful thing, but these shows will have you believe that it is sex that bestows significance on love, instead of the other way around. No offense to atheists, but I’ll stick with my silly magic.

So when House and Cuddy, two of the most complex and grownup characters currently on TV, finally got around to being on the same page for the first time in six years, I repeat, I was satisfied. Even better, I was touched. I was touched by their words to each other, the way she helped him up off the floor (symbolism alert!), their barely-there kiss, all the way to the final shot of their tightly, desperately joined hands. (I mean, seriously, who holds hands while making out anymore? I literally had to fan myself.) There was nothing tantalizing or titillating about their coming together, yet it was the sexiest thing I’d seen all year—perhaps longer—on the small screen. And I didn’t need visual proof to know that, in the House universe, those two totally got their freak on after the screen went black.

And so I urge you, television gods—as an non-sentimental, even cynical woman who does not get weepy at weddings and often rolls her eyes at proposal stories, I urge you—do not let on-screen romance die. As much as it shocks me to say this, less D.H. Lawrence and more Jane Austen, please. Look, I too dig a raunchy scene now and again; I just wish you realized that doing the nasty doesn’t always have to be so, well, nasty.