under the knife | grey’s anatomy catch-up report
We’re sad to report that last month’s pleas for a medical correspondent [#] to analyze Grey’s Anatomy went unanswered. Perhaps surgical residents don’t have time to watch television and write about it for weblogs (yet another reason to celebrate dropping out of the pre-med track). Though it took a week to get over the disappointment of not having a real MD evaluate the show, we got around to watching the first two episodes over the weekend.
As fun as it is to see Seattle through the dark mirror of Hollywood, you’ll probably enjoy the show more if you give up on any attempts to map the terrain of their “Seattle” to our city. For instance, try not to be distracted by the supposed existence of a secret hospital with tons of parking in Fisher Plaza that resembles the Washington State Liquor Control Board’s South Seattle complex. Do your best not to think about how Meredith’s swanky house can simultaneously be close to the fictional hospital and in a part of the city that requires her to drive North on the Alaskan Way Viaduct to get to work. We’re pretty sure that this fictional geography is a contrivance to let the producers meet their quota of tourism board approved sunny aerial shots of the city.
In case you haven’t been following along, the show is (approximately) about what happens when Felicity gets out of medical school and goes on to playing “the game” as a wannabe surgeon. Of course, it isn’t really Felicity — the show revolves around Meredith Grey who works at a hospital called Grace and is the daughter of a super-famous surgeon mother who now secretly has Alzheimer’s — but the voiceover narration remains the same. Grey is joined by one of the hot aliens from Roswell (Katherine Hegel’s Isabel on Roswell becomes Isobel “Izzie” on Grey’s Anatomy), the motorcycle riding wine pourer from Sideways (Sandra Oh), and Patrick Dempsey among others.
The first episode introduced us to a group of first-year surgery residents who are very very frightened to be practicing medicine. Although my only medical training includes a semester of volunteering at a hospital and watching far too many seasons of E.R., I really fear for these doctors and their patients. Whereas third-year medical students in the fictional Cook County hospital seem incredibly competent and ready to save lives, the kids at Seattle Grace Hospital seem scared out of their wits and desperate to observe a surgery. It’s only a matter of time before one of them stitches up a patient before removing a medical device of some sort. However, they’re not completely incompetent. Episode One begins with Grey and Patrick Dempsey waking up from a night of anonymous sex and ends with the students solving the medical mystery of how rhythmic gymnastics can lead to freaky seizures.
Last night’s episode was mostly about an attempted rape that ended with the rape victim biting off her attacker’s penis. They didn’t say which “park” the event occurred in, but we have our suspicions. Hilarity ensues as Grey carries the severed member around in a cooler for most of the hour. Between her penis-watching duties, Grey has time to get freaked out about the victim’s choice of footwear (seeing your shoes on someone else is a real downer), conduct numerous interviews for potential roommates, and solve yet another medical mystery (the case of a blueish baby). Other characters get annoyed by happy hugging healthy patients, observe a lot of patients dying in trauma surgeries, and treat an illegal immigrant in the uncharacteristically down-pouring “rain.”
Episode 2 Seattle-related highlights: “mocha lattes” are not good bribes, “ferry boats” are the key to Manhattanite Patrick Dempsey’s heart (f.y.i., Seattle is surrounded by water on three sides!), the “police” are slow to show up to claim iced genitals / rape evidence, the vacancy rate in “Seattle” is apparently such that everyone is really desperate to score a room in Grey’s mysteriously-located house.
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Grey’s Anatomy airs on ABC, Sunday nights at 10 pm [abc]
And don’t forget the lovely parting shot at the end of the episode - I had no idea there was an entrance to a large hospital opposite the Public Market Center sign. I guess they finally rented out that vacant dotcom office, after all!
(I had the chance to watch the show for the first time last night, at the insistence of my sister, whom I was visiting in Philadelphia. Said sister has only been to Seattle twice, briefly both times. Needless to say, she had a very different experience of the show.)
I thought I saw that, too! But I didn’t record the episode and assumed that it must have been a picture hanging on the “hospital” wall. I couldn’t believe that they expected us to think that the public market was actually just outside the window.
Maybe I’ll download the episode to get a second look at that shot — and to try to read the roommate posting.
I’m sad to say that I think the most enjoyable part of the show is going to be finding the nitpicks like this; it’s a decently done storyline so far, but the nitpicking is going to take precedence. Well, at least for me, and one would assume anyone else living in Seattle or familiar with the area.
If you do watch the episode again, please let us (or at least me) know if it was supposed to actually be the Market or not. The way the shot was set up seemed to indicate we were supposed to believe that the elevator/stairs down were looking through large glass windows onto the Market, but one can hope it was supposed to be a giant mural, instead…
I might be curious enough to check it out. It was just there for such a short time and was so egregiously wrong that I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Also I was distracted trying to figure out if Patrick Dempsey was using a Sidekick. And if so, which model? It looked too dark to be the sk2.
Huh, I didn’t notice - I was too busy being shocked they were so bold with the location of the hospital. But I’ll be watching it from now on, so I’ll pay more attention to the smaller details. And I can offer some feedback on medical stuff; among other things, I study medical ethics at UW. ;)
Nice. On the first episode, they showed a helicopter landing on Fisher Plaza to deliver a patient. It really is entertaining to watch for the details!
I’ll get my MD in a month (almost there) so I’m in the distressing situation of having the blundering fool residents spoil the public’s perception of surgical interns just before I begin my own internship. In any event, I have included some medical analysis of the show in my own blog at notrocketsci.blogspot.com, if you’re interested.
Ok, if anyone thinks that this show remotely resembles real surgical residency needs to get a frontal lobotomy. For starters, if you’ve never been to a hospital: physicians are clustered into organ specific and disease specific teams: neurosurgery, cardiac surgery, abdominal surgery, trauma, etc. So a “general surgeon” would NEVER venture into a Neurosurgery case, or a cardiothoracic case. A general surgery resident DOES NOT ADMIT a patient with a primary diagnosis of epilepsy: THAT iS A GENERAL MEDICINE ADMIT. We don’t gp trolling through the halls looking for patients, I mean really… WE ARE FAR MORE BUSY THAN TO TROLL FOR PATIENTS.. Also: When was the last time physicians were pushing patients around other than in the 1960s… I mean they are in SEATTLE, not some small ‘burb so there will be orderlies. I wonder if they ever consulted with anyone in surgery before creating this show… Also if you didn’t notice: people don’t stand around in the operating rooms with their masks off.. Hello: Ever heard of sterility??? And lastly: I hate the way they portray surgery interns as doing anything to “get a case” as if we really aren’t hear for patient CARE and not anything else…
- A concerned 4th year surgery resident
If you do watch the episode again, please let us (or at least me) know if it was supposed to actually be the Market or not. The way the shot was set up seemed to indicate we were supposed to believe that the elevator/stairs down were looking through large glass windows onto the Market, but one can hope it was supposed to be a giant mural, instead…
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Yes, it looks a like a mural because the hospital “workers” walking in front of it cast shadows onto it.
As a surgery resident, I cannot watch more than 15 minutes of this show. NO, surgery resident gets to the hospital while the sun is up! Baby were here at 4 to 5 AM not 7-8 (unless you mean leaving at 7-8 pm). I’m not even going to mention that the few cases I saw them attempt to tackle have little or nothing to do with surgery, IF they are going to base a show on “the toughest surgery residency program in the country, could they not have any semblance of a real surgery program? Where did they get their medical consultant? General Hospital
RIDICULOUS
And yes, most surgery residents (at least junior ones 1st-3rd yr) don’t have time to blog but I’m doing research and no longer on a 80hr work week so I can answer.
hope I shed some light,
Disgruntled Surgery Resident
woah, relax there.
hopefully since you guys are surgery residents you have brain enough to know that this is a TELEVISION show! In case you didn’t know, T.V. is fake and grey’s anatomy is pretty much a soap opera. I suggest you stop overanalyzing the obvious flaws of this show and and take a load off. enjoy life a little - let it entertain you like it was meant to do. If you want real life, watch reality t.v. or just go take a walk.