I’ve spent a lot of time in the hospital lately, that is, at Grey-Sloan Memorial, the one where the doctors of the “Grey’s Anatomy” TV show work. I’m fine, just binge-watching seasons 1-16 on Netflix.
The broadcast TV networks offer nothing this time of year but junk and commercials. Weekly shows make you wait to see what happens next. With Netflix, the credits roll, and bam, you’re into the next episode. Just a couple minutes, you tell yourself, and then you watch the whole thing, again and again, until it’s way past bedtime again.
If someone else lived here, they’d probably ask me to shut it off, but I’ve just got my dog, and she likes it when I sit with her in one place for a while.
I stopped watching the current episodes when COVID arrived in “Grey’s” fictional world. I had enough of that in real life, didn’t want it on my TV shows. So I went back to the beginning. Ah, the days of Izzy, George, Cristina, Meredith and Alex, when they were interns, just baby doctors. Now, as I watch Season 15, the ones who survived are chief of this and head of that.
I don’t know why I’m fascinated by hospital shows. Before Grey’s, I watched General Hospital, ER, Chicago Hope, House, MASH, and more. At this point in my life, I have spent enough time hanging around real hospitals. I’m always glad to get out.
But Grey-Sloan is not real in both good ways and bad. My doctors are never as attractive or as persistent as these docs. They don’t work round the clock till they cure you or they weep over your dead body. They don’t sit by your bedside holding your hand. They don’t find your lost family, play games with you, or organize wedding and birthday parties for you right there at the hospital.
The real surgeons I have seen drop by on their rounds, usually when you’re asleep, glance at the chart, make a pronouncement and vanish. You see them in the operating room for a nanosecond before the anesthesiologist knocks you out and again in recovery when they tell you what happened before you’re awake enough to remember what they said.
The Grey’s doctors are all surgeons. In real life, surgeons just do surgery. They don’t push gurneys, insert IV’s, run MRIs, sonograms and CT tests, and work in the ER, the ICU, and the pediatric intensive care unit. Nurses, aides, and technicians do most of the hands-on care. God bless them for their hard work.
Nothing happens as quickly as it does on TV. You can expect to wait hours in the ER for test results, for doctors’ orders, or for the doctor to show up, or maybe you’re still in the waiting room two hours after you arrived.
I’d love to have that fast, caring service. On the other hand, every patient who arrives at Grey-Sloan seems to have a brain tumor or a failing heart. At some point during the surgery, their heart stops. Nobody has a normal childbirth or a normal surgery. No thanks.
Besides, I have seen what’s going on outside the OR. Too often the TV doctors are sleep-deprived, hung over, or obsessed with the person they just had sex with in the on-call room. I know doctors are used to seeing naked bodies, but why is it that every time anyone kisses on that show, the very next second they’re taking each other’s clothes off? And don’t they stink and have bad breath from all those hours working? Aren’t they tired? Don’t they get hungry? They never eat a meal without their pager going off.
They have all been through so much, it’s a wonder they can even stand up. April had no pulse for over three hours on the episode I watched Saturday night, and they brought her back to life. In the next episode, she was looking gorgeous and getting married. What? The girl almost died.
Poor Meredith—plane crash, drowning, beaten to a pulp by a crazed patient, near dead from COVID . . . she’s always fine. Robbins lost her leg, Bailey had a heart attack and a nervous breakdown, Weber and Amelia Shepherd both had brain tumors. Weber also got electrocuted. DeLuca survived a face-smashing beating and a concussion. They’re all fine and doing surgery. The docs at Grey-Sloan are that good.
Words like whipple, central line, crike, bovie, 10-blade, pneumothorax, sepsis, and UNOS run through my head. There’s actually a Grey’s medical term glossary online. I have watched so many surgeries I feel as if I could do it myself. But don’t worry; I won’t try.
Write what you know, they say. At this point, I know “Grey’s Anatomy.”
I’d much rather watch doctors curing cancer on Netflix than see what my new editor has said about the manuscript I’ve been obsessing over for the last few months. It’s the first time someone else has read it. I’m afraid to open the email. Doc, a little something to numb the pain?
Today is the first day of summer. I wrote here about “Grey’s” in March when I first started watching. With 24 episodes a season, I ought to have a medical degree by now. Meanwhile, when I look past the TV screen, I’m getting the urge to start rearranging, redecorating, and repairing again. Look out.
What’s your guilty on-screen pleasure these days? Can you watch just one episode?
P.S. I just found out Season 17 will start showing on Netflix on July 3. OMG. Somebody break my remote control. Please.
Unleashed in Oregon 