As most shows sweep into a post-premiere lag, it’s tough to pinpoint a truly deserving F-Rated moment for the week in TV. One show I have to commend is Grey’s Anatomy, which after a dynamic showing in its first two seasons, has managed to keep up the quality of its episodes in the traditionally slump-ridden third season. With new character developments (the softer side of Bailey–which I love, despite a fan quotient hinting the opposite) and plot resolutions to avoid story tedium, Grey’s is on steady path to even more success. So what moment in this week’s episode walks away with the F-Rated prize of the week? It was something small, but something big all at once.
One of the main things I like about Grey’s is the little prizes of character development you get from even the slightest of actions or lines. We see it with Meredith in her longing looks, or in the way that Alex, notoriously rude to just about everyone, opens up to a kid with the same abusive past he’s suffered. This week, we saw a similar vulnerability come out in Izzy, one that I’m sure every viewer was aware of taking into account her tendency to become emotionally involved with her patients. The line of definition came amidst Izzy’s episode-long stay outside the hospital, as she mustered up courage to take a step back into the place where she saw Denny, her now expired patient/fiance last. As George tries to force her in after a few hours of her stagnancy, she reveals quite concisely why she can’t.
“I was never one of those girls…” she says. The type of girl that dreamed about her wedding dress, and created a colour scheme for her bridesmaids–she wasn’t even the type of girl that liked bridesmaids. “That stuff is shallow and stupid..” she says. But she exposes, in a moment of utter helplessness, “…Why are this stupid girl’s thoughts running through my head.” She can’t go back inside until she can stop thinking about her could-have-been luscious wedding, and her wedding dress.
Such a small revelation seems nothing in the grande scheme of the episode, which like most of the series’ was laced around an hour-long theme–this week’s being the notion of pain. What was admirable about Izzy’s revelation was that the writers were willing to break an established characteristic of hers to fully display their theme. In one way this can be seen as a cop-out, an out of canon revelation, but the way the theme worked its way into her revelation, it made it seem like this part of Izzy was there all along and was just hidden well. She never was drawn out as the girly-girl, infact she revolted it many times, often being stereotyped as the ‘typical blonde’. But with her revelation, we realized that Izzy has that girly-girl in her, that in her moment of extreme pain it has come out and more importantly, that the often misjudged girly-girl has got a backbone of strength, and will get better. She didn’t have to take the first step back inside that hospital this episode for us to see that she will.
On a show that portrays a cast of gutsy females that are intentionally depicted in such a way that they act and do what every sex-crazed man would do without the added flack, it was nice to see the anti-convention take a bit of a break. The idea being that a girl doesn’t have to do everything a man does, in every way he does, as well as he does to prove that she’s just as strong. She can be very feminine, hold the common stereotypes associated to females, have a boo-hoo session to express her pain, and still be a strong woman.
Izzy, despite the disdain she holds against the bridesmaid brigade and all things girly–is still strong. That message alone, sums up this week’s F-Rate for Grey’s Anatomy: A ‘Flourishing’ success.
Still trying to figure out how F-Rated works? Read here.
