An Open Letter to Shonda Rhimes.

Dear Shonda,

I have considered writing this letter to you for a while now. It's been bouncing around in my head for months. And now, with the fall season approaching, I have found that I have composed my list of the shows I'm looking forward to. Grey's Anatomy is not on that list. Shonda, I'm one of Those Consumers. I don't like to just walk away; I like to tell you why I'm walking away. So here it is. My letter to you about Grey's Anatomy.

Shonda, what happened, girlfriend? This time last year, still in a Denny Duquette mourning haze, I was literally counting the days for the Grey's premiere, planning my watching party, checking the PVR 14 times to ensure I could watch the episode over and over should it be required. As it turned out, it was not required at all. Shonda, the first episode was cow dung. And the bitch of it was, it went downhill from there. It got so bad by midseason that I had to wonder: Were the writers smoking up daily in that room you all talk about on the blog? Were you maybe all drunk on aftershave and unable to work, or maybe you were all kidnapped by aliens, so the network turned the whole thing over to a bunch of suicidal fanfic writing teenagers? Work with me here, girlfriend. What happened?

I don't understand it. I don't get what happened to the show, or where you took it. I hung in, Shonda. I watched every episode, even though by the end of the year I had a hard time defending it to my friends who had long ditched. Frankly, I had a hard time defending it to myself. I just kept thinking it had to get better. This show used to be amazing. It's got to come back sometime... hasn't it? But it didn't. It just kept getting worse.

From what I can see in a seasonal retrospect, there were a lot of Bad Decisions. Here's my Armchair Quarterback's list of Badness:

Bad 1. Taking Addison from a tough, wisecracking, smart woman and turning her into a wobbly, insecure, annoying ball of mush.

Bad 2. Killing off Ellis Grey, when her character was so strong and her story arc still held so much potential.

Bad 3. Introducting Mare Winningham as Meredith's Stepmother, then killing her off just as we were starting to like her. Oh, and making it Meredith's fault. Because Meredith's life didn't suck enough already.

Bad 4. Killing off George's Father. This wasn't such a bad move at the time, but when taken in context with the deaths of both Meredith's mother and stepmother, it's obvious that all these parents were just disposable characters being used as plot devices. Shonda, hint for next time? Viewers don't like being manipulated like that. We know when our heartstrings are being pulled, and occasionally, just occasionally, we like it. But when you did it three times in one season, we knew we were being used.

Bad 5-9. Izzy and George. George and Izzy. Gizzy. Vomit, puke, blech. This is so awful that I honestly don't know how to talk about it. You get it, right? You get why this was so ludicrous, so painful to watch (and not in the good, oh-my-heart-aches-for-them way, but in the uggh-I-need-to-turn-the-channel-this-is-so-awful way)? I mean, first there was the Denny and the oh, my god, I love Denny, that was so beautiful, and so sad, and ohmigod, Denny. The Denny arc had the capability of reducing grown women to blithering idiots, it was that good. And then all of a sudden, Izzy and George have drunk sex once and now George is the love of Izzy's life? Puke. Just puke. And I don't get it. I have to ask: is the writing team incapable of writing a love story without having to have some angsty bullshit about tearing up a marriage? Get an original thought, gang. This is the third infidelity plotline in as many years. It's old, it's painful, and it's not entertaining anymore.

Bad 10. Letting one word in one argument on set dictate your writing decisions. I'm not talking about the word itself. I'm talking about the reaction of ABC and the cast to that decision - which was ultimately to take one of the strongest characters and most complex relationships on the show and flush it all down the toilet.

Finally, Bad 11,12, and oh look, unlucky 13: That entire three episode clusterfuck arc of hell where the ferry crash into the dock becomes symbolic for the show crashing and burning in the minds of the viewers. Shonda, I have to say, I was embarrassed for the writers in this one. This was ludicrous. You were better than this. Way better. That ferry must have crashed because it was jumping a shark on its way in to port. It was bad, Shonda. Really, really bad.

I'm not going to get in to Burke's arm and the whole ludicrous deception arc, or introducing Meredith's half sister as McDreamy's new love interest (oh, as if we don't see that from a mile away), or flunking George so as to have a plot device to introduce the new residents into the already overpopulated show. I just won't. What I am going to say, is stop smoking up, get the writers in to rehab, fire the fanfic teenagers, stop spending so much energy on the Writers' Blog and the celebrity of your own writing team, and get back to concentrating on your job: writing an awesome show. You can do better than Season 3. I won't go as far as suggesting Meredith wake up and find McDreamy in the shower and she finds it was all a dream, but if ever such a plot device was warranted, this, this would be the time.

Yours,
Proprietess of ThreeSeven

Images stolen with love from the Striped Wall.