Grey’s Anatomy premiered on ABC on March 27, 2005 as a mid-season replacement and has been renewed every year since, which puts it past two decades on the air. Shonda Rhimes developed the pilot and ran the show as showrunner, head writer and executive producer until she stepped down in 2015. The series has outlasted its creator, most of its original cast and every trend in television drama that has come and gone since. That is either a triumph or a warning, and it is a bit of both.
Trailer, via OTT Flix.
Seattle Grace
The show follows the personal and professional lives of surgical interns, residents and attendings at a fictional Seattle hospital, first called Seattle Grace, later Seattle Grace Mercy West, and finally Grey Sloan Memorial. It is set in Seattle and mostly filmed in Los Angeles and Vancouver. The title splices the protagonist’s surname with the anatomy textbook Gray’s Anatomy, which tells you the show has always had a sense of humor about its own seriousness.
Meredith
For most of its run the series is about Dr. Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, and her progression from surgical intern to fully qualified doctor. Pompeo’s performance is the show’s spine, and her ability to carry a scene that has been written a hundred ways before is the reason the series survived its cast turnover.
The original cast was nine star-billed actors: Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, T. R. Knight, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr., Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey. By the 19th season, only three of them remained. Wilson’s Miranda Bailey and Pickens’s Richard Webber are the other two, and their steadiness is a big part of why the hospital still feels like a place.
Why It Works
Rhimes built a machine that produces feeling on demand. A medical case, a romance and a crisis in every episode, arranged so that each reflects the others. The formula is visible, and it is also durable, because the show has always cast well and written its women as the center of the story rather than its decoration.
Where It Falls Short
A show this long repeats itself. The disasters escalate, the romances recycle, and there are seasons that exist because the network renewed the show rather than because anyone had something to say. The departures of major cast members are often written around rather than into the story. And a viewer coming in late faces a wall of history that the show no longer bothers to explain.
The Verdict
Grey’s Anatomy is the most successful medical drama in American television history, and it earned that by being reliable rather than daring. At its best it is still capable of an hour that lands. At its worst it is on autopilot. Both are still on the air.
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