Meredith Grey has no redeeming characteristics
So I watched some episodes of Grey's Anatomy because I am sick and watching subpar medical shows is what I do when I'm sick.
Is it just me, or Meredith Grey the worst person in the history of television?
She's obviously supposed to be a dramatic, female version of J.D. from Scrubs. I have a hard enough time liking J.D. Make him unfunny, and he would be intolerable, as Meredith is. And yet I feel like it's more than that. Somehow, she is even worse in every way.
I'm not sure what it is about her. Maybe it's the way she is positioned, from her centrality and her ownership of the VOs, as the protagonist, yet she has no problems (she has perfect medical knowledge and all the boys like her) except those she creates herself with her bad personality (randomly yelling at, and making out with, Dr. McDreamy; randomly being mad at, then not being mad at, the people who are I guess her friends because they are near her, although she doesn't seem to like them). Maybe it's because whenever anything bad happens to a patient or ethics are violated, Meredith's first and only thought is about how this affects her career (especially amusing: her "why become a surgeon" speech in the pilot in which helping people is not even mentioned). Maybe it's the way Cristina Yang is supposedly "the bitch," when Meredith is twice as cutthroat and one tenth as honest. Maybe it's the way she's always flying off the handle at the slightest provocation and screaming at people who (1) did nothing to deserve her wrath and (2) universally have it at least as bad as she does.
Look, I like antiheroes; I like Dr. House. But I really don't get the sense from the way the show is written that she's supposed to be an antihero. I think we're supposed to find her complicated, hard on the outside but fragile on the inside, and ultimately relatable. I think her screaming is supposed to be "cute"? Like a cute spazzy breakdown? But it happens so often and is so vicious that it isn't cute, it's just a shrill, unfun rage problem.
MEREDITH: No. No. We're not watching my mother's surgery tapes, we're not unpacking boxes, and we're not having long conversations where we celebrate the moments of our lives. And use a coaster!
GEORGE: ...I ordered Chinese food.
MEREDITH: I hate Chinese food!
I skipped ahead to the "most recent five" episodes on hulu, and it looks like Meredith has only gotten worse. In episode 20 of season 6, the team is in an admittedly (over the top) stressful situation: a gunman has been wandering the hospital, shooting people. Cristina is operating on McDreamy as Meredith and a new intern character wait outside. The intern weeps. Meredith of course responds with rage.
MEREDITH: Stop crying! Look, it took me a long time to find him, a long time. And even then it took me a long time to even know that I wanted him. To be married. To be his wife. To have his kids. And now that I realize that, he's lying on a table in there and my best friend's hands are inside his chest! You don't get to cry about that!
APRIL: Reed was my best friend. She died today.
HA! Oh, she's so awful. I guess I don't actually know the intervening backstory here--was April competition for McDreamy's hand? Did Meredith know that Reed is dead? But to me it looks like Meredith's worst qualities--screaming at innocent passersby, assuming that her problems are the worst problems, blaming the world for things which are squarely her own fault such as her own reluctance to marry McDreamy--only intensify over the years.
Although it is sort of badass when she operates while having a miscarriage.
So yeah that is a fun show.
Is it just me, or Meredith Grey the worst person in the history of television?
She's obviously supposed to be a dramatic, female version of J.D. from Scrubs. I have a hard enough time liking J.D. Make him unfunny, and he would be intolerable, as Meredith is. And yet I feel like it's more than that. Somehow, she is even worse in every way.
I'm not sure what it is about her. Maybe it's the way she is positioned, from her centrality and her ownership of the VOs, as the protagonist, yet she has no problems (she has perfect medical knowledge and all the boys like her) except those she creates herself with her bad personality (randomly yelling at, and making out with, Dr. McDreamy; randomly being mad at, then not being mad at, the people who are I guess her friends because they are near her, although she doesn't seem to like them). Maybe it's because whenever anything bad happens to a patient or ethics are violated, Meredith's first and only thought is about how this affects her career (especially amusing: her "why become a surgeon" speech in the pilot in which helping people is not even mentioned). Maybe it's the way Cristina Yang is supposedly "the bitch," when Meredith is twice as cutthroat and one tenth as honest. Maybe it's the way she's always flying off the handle at the slightest provocation and screaming at people who (1) did nothing to deserve her wrath and (2) universally have it at least as bad as she does.
Look, I like antiheroes; I like Dr. House. But I really don't get the sense from the way the show is written that she's supposed to be an antihero. I think we're supposed to find her complicated, hard on the outside but fragile on the inside, and ultimately relatable. I think her screaming is supposed to be "cute"? Like a cute spazzy breakdown? But it happens so often and is so vicious that it isn't cute, it's just a shrill, unfun rage problem.
MEREDITH: No. No. We're not watching my mother's surgery tapes, we're not unpacking boxes, and we're not having long conversations where we celebrate the moments of our lives. And use a coaster!
GEORGE: ...I ordered Chinese food.
MEREDITH: I hate Chinese food!
I skipped ahead to the "most recent five" episodes on hulu, and it looks like Meredith has only gotten worse. In episode 20 of season 6, the team is in an admittedly (over the top) stressful situation: a gunman has been wandering the hospital, shooting people. Cristina is operating on McDreamy as Meredith and a new intern character wait outside. The intern weeps. Meredith of course responds with rage.
MEREDITH: Stop crying! Look, it took me a long time to find him, a long time. And even then it took me a long time to even know that I wanted him. To be married. To be his wife. To have his kids. And now that I realize that, he's lying on a table in there and my best friend's hands are inside his chest! You don't get to cry about that!
APRIL: Reed was my best friend. She died today.
HA! Oh, she's so awful. I guess I don't actually know the intervening backstory here--was April competition for McDreamy's hand? Did Meredith know that Reed is dead? But to me it looks like Meredith's worst qualities--screaming at innocent passersby, assuming that her problems are the worst problems, blaming the world for things which are squarely her own fault such as her own reluctance to marry McDreamy--only intensify over the years.
Although it is sort of badass when she operates while having a miscarriage.
So yeah that is a fun show.