Trans/plant/portation

One of the biggest badass characters on television is leaving next week and I couldn’t be more heartbroken about it. It’s not just that Sandra Oh is arguably the best actor on Grey’s Anatomy (or broadcast television for that matter), it’s that the character she plays, Cristina Yang, has been an unsung feminist presence in a series often marked by obsession about heterosexual relationships and the men that inhabit them. Dr. Yang had been through bad relationships, abandonment at the altar (“It’s not that Burke broke up with me, it’s how he broke up with me.”), and an on-again, off-again affair with the chief of surgery, but she leaves the narrative at the top of her game, prioritizing her own needs, and inspiring other surgeons in her field. But let me get more specific about the aspects of Cristina that I adore so much, and thus the reasons I’ll miss seeing her around the hospital.

1. Her self confidence has never wavered—She started as an intern with the others, but came out of the gate maximizing her procedures hours and stating what kind of surgeon she would be. Maybe Izzy floated around not knowing which sub-specialty to take up and maybe George was trying to listen to his heart to figure himself out and maybe Meredith was fighting the shadow of her eponymous mother, but Cristina was all focus, all the time. Read More…

This week the writers gave us something we all really needed: nostalgia and unconditional love. Who’d have thunk anyone had fond memories of 2009? Spoilers after the jump, as usual. Read More…

In my early 30s I joined a rough and tumble flag football league, coached by a two-year veteran of the Lions who’d blown out both knees and still hungered to get back on the field. His frustration at enduring such a short NFL career was often realized in the form of shouting at us, and one of his favorite things to shout about was our apparent lack of dedication to winning. Did I mention he’d been on the Lions? When another team so much as assembled together before a game, he would point at them and then tell us loudly, “They came to PLAY!” Why this is relevant and spoilers after the jump. Read More…

Let’s talk about sex, baby. Or rather, let’s text about it. It’s a frisky fall in Seattle, maybe because nobody can tell the difference between autumn and spring over there until the daffodils pop out of the ground. But there’s a return to a focus on the doctor pairings, right in time for Miranda’s break up with Eli. With fifth year pressure on our merry band of residents, some nookie time may be just what the doctor [sic] ordered. This is all bound to go well, right? Spoilers after the jump. Read More…

Let it never be said that Grey’s Anatomy’s writers were afraid of multiple season-long story arcs. We’ve got a few this year, and we’re only a little way into the season, but so far there’s the adoption story line, the Lexie-Jackson affair, the baby angst between Owen and Cristina, and Alex’s plight of isolation. This week, those stories continue, sometimes with a little poignancy, but they mostly took to the backstage, two-upped by the twin moments of us meeting a character’s mother for the first time, and with The Trendsetting Surgery of the Week. Spoilers after the jump. Read More…

I’m just going to put the spoilers announcement right up front this week because honestly, I can’t say anything about this episode, even in my introduction, without giving anything way. So, spoilers from here on out, folks. Read More…

An adorable baby has gone into the foster system that Drs. Shepherd and Grey wanted to prevent for her, but Grey’s leads off by talking about leadership. Leadership? Not to be found in the bickering couple who seem to love arguing more than each other. Not for Dr. Kepner, who is trying to find her feet as Chief Resident. We’ll get into leadership among the fifth-year residents in a minute, but again, who wants to discuss such things when baby Zola is gone? Spoilers from here on out!

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Shonda Rhimes promised fans that the Grey’s Anatomy season finale of year 7 would be the emotional equivalent of what had happened in season 6, which notoriously ended with a drawn-out shooting rampage from a grieving widower. But whereas Rhimes and her writers spent the better part of the post-cliffhanger episodes coming to terms with the violence’s effects—witness Cristina’s terror at working in an OR, relationship juggling between McSteamy, Callie, and Arizona, and the doctors parading through a PTSD specialist’s sessions—season 8 begins by erasing much of what we watched last May.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s not Portland’s Chamber of Commerce who comes up with the tragic storylines for the Seattle area. The ferry disaster, an airplane accident, now a sinkhole in the middle of the city, it seems that Emerald City is one treacherous place to live. When I lived there, I really just found it stressful to get going at a green light when sitting at a 50-degree angle, but overall, it was lovely.

Lovely is not a place Grey’s got to see last night, except in the fleetingest of moments. Spoilers from here on out, folks. Read More…

Another in a series of posts by guest bloggers, today’s is from Kirthana Ramisetti, a.k.a. the force behind Pop Scribblings on Twitter. I had the good fortune to work with her over at I Fry Mine in Butter, and I highly recommend reading anything she has to say about television. Thanks, Kirthana!

It’s hard to do a “very special episode” of a character giving birth without devolving into eyerolling cliches. But once in awhile there are some memorable ones, and in honor the arrival of Emile Dean Maroon Beechey and his parents, here are some of TV’s best baby episodes.

The Cosby Show: I always appreciate when a TV show lets its pregnant character give birth in a hospital rather than come up with a contrivance that forces the poor woman to give birth somewhere ridiculous like a broken elevator or an airplane. The Cosby Show only allows one slight cliche when Sandra and Elvin surprise their families with the news of twins (“It’s a boy!” “Awww!” “And a girl!” “What?”).

But the nice thing about letting Sandra give birth in a normal way is that the focus of the episode was on the family moments, as Cliff and Clair react to being grandparents for the first time. The best part of the show was Cliff and Sandra’s sweet and funny conversation about becoming a parent. Sandra telling Cliff “I just want to say how much I’ve loved having you as a father” is genuinely touching, as is Cliff’s response: “Good parents are made by good children.”

(the scene begins at the 2:54 mark)