After a string of really weird episodes, Grey's Anatomy blasted us with a stream of extremely good episodes. One after the other, they just keep delivering and this past Thursday (the 100th episode) had one of the most predictable, but most enjoyable episodes.
Ever since season one, everyone has been wishing and hoping for Meredith and Derek to tie the knot and now that they're finally engaged and ready to be married, there's speculation of whether or not they will actually walk down the aisle this season. Much debate went on these past few weeks of whether or not the two will finally join in holy matrimony, and I for one said they will not.
Knowing the formula that Shonda Rhimes structures her plotline in and how she tends to like dark and twisty themes, there cannot be a wedding with some sort of hitch (no pun intended). We have been seen the foreshadowing for weeks -- with Izzie planning the wedding like Bridezilla, to her about to kick the bucket from cancer, Meredith and Derek not exactly fans of big fancy ceremonies and no mention of family coming to the wedding (as it was not worked into the plot I'm sure since the aim wasn't even for their wedding), and understanding how Shonda has a penchant for twists -- we just knew that something would go differently when the episode finally came. And it did.
In a sort of "all's-well-ends-well" kind of manner, Meredith and Derek got their happy "non-wedding" day, while Izzie got her perfect wedding to Alex. And I will say that that wedding was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. We've all been to weddings at least once in our lives, or even seen a variety of wedding scenes in movies and on television, but that wedding was really, really, really well-done. The flowers were gorgeous, the dress really looked great on Izzie (much better than Meredith, in my opinion), and it was great start-to-finish. All the four original interns-turned-residents were involved somehow, with Izzie being the bride, Alex being the groom, Cristina as maid of honor, Meredith as Alex's best man, and George acting as the "father who gives away his daughter" (though partway), it was a really well done scene.
I loved how there was so much interaction, passion, drama, and excellent acting by all the actors in the episode. I loved seeing the contrast of the "normal" morning activities to how it leads into the perfect evening, and then heartbreak that we all felt at the end when the episode was over. There were some stellar lines in the script of the episode and they're really hard to forget. I felt really touched a lot of times and induced to senseless crying most of the evening when watching the show.
The thing about this episode is that it wasn't even the most interesting of episodes in the season to begin with. We have had very controversial themed episodes before this and those were quite excellent, but I loved how this episode started out. It was a very normal, somewhat routine -- though one can beg to differ -- day. We all knew there was a wedding, and everyone was pretty hyped for it, but it really stressed a point of it starting out as a normal day. We got a trauma that came in, a fairly normal one compared to other cases (i.e. children shooting their abusive fathers, serial killers who gets things shoved into their spines, etc.) in which 6 college kids on their way to graduation, gets hit by a semi and then only 5 of the 6 survive. Yes, morbid, but these are the type of cases that happen -- unfortunately -- more commonly than others and that made it a normal sort of beginning.
We have the contrast to where Meredith is "happily" scrubbing in on her first solo surgery (Derek's wedding present to her) and gets to save a life, which has a very different dynamic and atmosphere compared to carnage that's happening in the E.R. Both very normal things we see from time to time in a hospital. What made up for the lack of unique medical cases was the anticipation for a long-awaited wedding ceremony and great character interaction.
The acting was superb. All the actors did such a fantastic job that I cannot even begin to explain how much they've affected me and other viewers. Every actor invoked some emotion from me, I was either laughing or crying. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and I love it when episodes can stir such emotions from me, because that means, the writers did a good job and the actors did a good job. Though this is not the most interesting episode, it is without a doubt, the most memorable and emotional one topping Denny's death back in season two. At least for me, I felt that this episode was one of those "finally, something that comes out right" sort of episodes and I just loved it so much, I could not help but spill my guts on here about it.
I can't wait until next episode, but I really hope that they don't end it with whether Izzie lives or dies -- though I have a feeling that that may be the case. If she does die, they'll probably take the Issiah Washington approach in the beginning of season six, where some time has passed and someone tells what happened to the character instead of having them be there. For instance, beginning of season four Burke's mother shows up and pretty much helps her son with the breakup since the actor was no longer part of the show. If Katherine Heigl is no longer with the cast, then the approach may be the start of a funeral or some time after her death and people will be talking about her, etc.
If Shonda does so choose to be merciful and let Izzie survive, I would be both surprised and yet not surprised. As I've said before, she is the queen of twists, and as Melissa George (the actress who portrayed Sadie the intern earlier in the season) has pointed out before, she likes to punish those who have crossed her. Perhaps for the comment Heigl made last summer about "not having enough material to work with to warrant an emmy" made Shonda so angry that she's finally decided to write Izzie off the show, but then again... Izzie has always been a bout of crazy and Shonda loves inflating crazy -- take for instance, Meredith dying once and seeing her mother on the other side, and then Izzie having hallucination-inducing sex with her dead fiance -- so if she does keep Izzie on, it's because she still needs crazy in there somewhere in the show.
I, for one, cannot really see Grey's without Izzie as she has become one of those characters -- though from time to time can be quite annoying -- are so central to the story that there would be a void with their disappearance. Of course, it's not like we can't get used to it. We all got used to Burke not being on the show anymore, but she's an original cast member and I'd like her to stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment