Grey’s Anatomy – Does this season of Grey’s need CPR?

When Lexie hurled that softball into the chest of Sloan’s latest conquest, I laughed. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. It was as though Lexie had been transformed into a conduit for the audience’s feelings, or at least for mine, about how things have been going as of late on Grey’s Anatomy.

And she hit the symbol of what was wrong right in the heart.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m thus far disappointed with the eighth season, but I would like someone to jolt these characters awake in the way in which Lexie’s vicious lob got everyone’s attention on the lackluster Seattle Grace softball team. Everything, like their team’s ball playing, has begun to seem stale and off, nothing like the excellence that was last season.

Take Bailey, who used to be one of my favorite, no nonsense, strong characters on television. I can’t stand her this season. She’s been walking around and being nasty to Owen, the new chief of surgery, for no particular reason. She’s seething with fury at Richard for taking the bullet for Meredith’s messing around with the Alzheimer’s trial in order to help his wife. But most of all, Bailey seems to be reserving the bulk of her vitriol for Meredith, even when she knows Meredith is going through a personal hell in that she’s not sure if she’ll ever see her adopted daughter again.

Yes, Bailey has been angry and frustrated before, like when Izzie cut Denny’s LVAD wire, but she eventually went to bat for Izzie, especially since Izzie was mourning the death of her fiance. Yet with Meredith, Bailey’s directing a different kind of rage at her and it’s making Bailey seem irrational and that her emotions are getting in the way of her medical practice and the success of her research project. This is not like the Bailey’s we’ve come to know and love. In this episode Bailey seemed like a bully, shouting and being unnecessarily curt with Meredith and then getting into a beef with her in the outfield where Meredith and Cristina were drunken fools who couldn’t play a whit of softball.

Meanwhile, guilt-ridden Alex was racing all over the place trying to obtain info on Zola and urging the judge who’s overseeing her case to realize that Derek and Meredith are the best parents for her, even though Alex wasn’t supposed to have contact with the judge. My head is spinning when it comes to this character. One minute he’s good Alex who’ll do anything for you including break the rules or bribe someone. The next minute he’s angry, bitter Alex who’ll tell everyone to screw off, try to sabotage your career if you displease him and refuse to lift a finger to help out a colleague. Sure, characters can and should be layered and complicated, but it seems as though the writers go through an all or nothing, all good or all bad Alex phases a bit too frequently for my taste.

Then there’s Owen who looked an awful lot like an ineffective Kepner in that he had no control or authority over the staff, especially on the softball field. This is a guy who served in Iraq as a trauma surgeon, operating under fire, who, when he first came to Seattle Grace, commandeered the ER and took charge, did edgy, gutsy things to save lives. Remember when Cristina first treated him in the ER after an accident and he stapled his own wound closed without anesthesia and Cristina was totally turned on by his machismo? Now Owen has been reduced to an insecure paper pusher who talks, begs almost, for his staff’s attention and no one appears to be listening.

Grey’s Anatomy needs a trauma surgeon of its own to try to rescue this season. Pronto.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Oct 28, 2011 @ 14:52 EST5EDT