Enter Sandman!
Huzzah! My first ever post on my new journal. If I start with a rant, I hope it's not in too bad taste. As to the subject of this rant, ::ahem:: I hope 
mcee will forgive me. So here goes.
I don't get all the fuss about Grey’s Anatomy. I mean, I do. Ellen Pompeo's very pretty. So's Patrick Dempsey, really. (I can't be the only one who never expected that big-eared 80s kid from all those wet teen comedies to turn out so much like - well, like a grown-up human being, and a handsome one at that.) Sandra Oh’s good at playing icy. God knows Katherine Heigl is a text-book example of Beautiful Blond Woman. Good heavens, the Girl Somehow Always Known As Izzie is as lovely as a daydream of spring. And she does sad like nobody's business, I'll give her that. But, really, the level of squee over this show leaves me gaping. I'm baffled that writing as pedestrian, as fundamentally predictable as this gets not only huge ratings but a critical pass, as well. ABC has a ginormous hit on its hands. CTV gets killer ratings every Sunday night, apparently. And the writing on this show is truly awful. Clichéd, sentimentalized pap, as unbelievable as it is manipulative. (What do I know, though? I think Desperate Housewives is a one-note joke that the audience doesn't realize is on them, and I think The Da Vinci Code is an offence not against the teachings of the Catholic Church, but the teachings of your fifth-grade English composition teacher.)
For the show to have its last scenes of the season unfold against the backdrop of a high-school prom is nothing more than truth in advertising, since the characters all behave like children anyway. The fact that none of these characters ever manages to behave like a thinking adult, let alone a professional in the world's most demanding line of work? Drives me batty.
Shonda Rimes even has a webpage about writing for the show. I think this is the bit that really chafes me. Because it’s cheating: if you’re a writer, tell the story. If your work doesn’t tell us everything you need us to know about it, then you didn’t do your job. Don’t write me a note after the show and tell me why I should think Denny’s awesome, show him doing awesome things.
Much of the show, I think, is better than it has any right to be, because the cast sells the hell out of it: Sandra Oh’s character is a stereotype from start to finish - she’s the driven, emotionless, Asian perfectionist - but we watch her anyway. T. R. Knight takes a stammering, woebegone Message Character and makes an actual person out of him, most of the time. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan, possibly the hardest-working actor of the 2005-2006 television season, manages to breathe rueful, warm life into Denny - a character so beatifically doomed he might as well be followed around by his own chorus of angels. Morgan, all gruff growls and puppydog eyes, is a born charmer, and says more with a dimpled, wistful smile than comes across in a page of Rimes’ teary, overheated prose. Not everyone is as lucky. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd has no soul, and the shamefaced Patrick Dempsey looks like he knows it. Ellen Pompeo, the titular Meredith Grey, isn’t a woman, she’s a very needy wet blanket whose only problem seems to be a terminal lack of rudimentary decision-making skills. She’s involved in not one but two triangular relationships; one paramour, the aforementioned McDreamy, can't find the stones to leave his wife when even she has figured out that she comes second in his shallow affections after Meredith Grey; meanwhile Meredith’s terribly cute widower veterinarian, played by Chris O’Donnell, has only one discernible failing - he’s not McDreamy. McBarf.
Of course, the part that really annoys me is the fact that I watched the season finale - all three hours of it - just to see what would happen to Izzie! ::sob:: I have no one but myself to blame for the near-dehydration that resulted. (Man, Katherine Heigl can do suffering!) But I still feel like a chump.
mcee will forgive me. So here goes.
I don't get all the fuss about Grey’s Anatomy. I mean, I do. Ellen Pompeo's very pretty. So's Patrick Dempsey, really. (I can't be the only one who never expected that big-eared 80s kid from all those wet teen comedies to turn out so much like - well, like a grown-up human being, and a handsome one at that.) Sandra Oh’s good at playing icy. God knows Katherine Heigl is a text-book example of Beautiful Blond Woman. Good heavens, the Girl Somehow Always Known As Izzie is as lovely as a daydream of spring. And she does sad like nobody's business, I'll give her that. But, really, the level of squee over this show leaves me gaping. I'm baffled that writing as pedestrian, as fundamentally predictable as this gets not only huge ratings but a critical pass, as well. ABC has a ginormous hit on its hands. CTV gets killer ratings every Sunday night, apparently. And the writing on this show is truly awful. Clichéd, sentimentalized pap, as unbelievable as it is manipulative. (What do I know, though? I think Desperate Housewives is a one-note joke that the audience doesn't realize is on them, and I think The Da Vinci Code is an offence not against the teachings of the Catholic Church, but the teachings of your fifth-grade English composition teacher.)
For the show to have its last scenes of the season unfold against the backdrop of a high-school prom is nothing more than truth in advertising, since the characters all behave like children anyway. The fact that none of these characters ever manages to behave like a thinking adult, let alone a professional in the world's most demanding line of work? Drives me batty.
Shonda Rimes even has a webpage about writing for the show. I think this is the bit that really chafes me. Because it’s cheating: if you’re a writer, tell the story. If your work doesn’t tell us everything you need us to know about it, then you didn’t do your job. Don’t write me a note after the show and tell me why I should think Denny’s awesome, show him doing awesome things.
Much of the show, I think, is better than it has any right to be, because the cast sells the hell out of it: Sandra Oh’s character is a stereotype from start to finish - she’s the driven, emotionless, Asian perfectionist - but we watch her anyway. T. R. Knight takes a stammering, woebegone Message Character and makes an actual person out of him, most of the time. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan, possibly the hardest-working actor of the 2005-2006 television season, manages to breathe rueful, warm life into Denny - a character so beatifically doomed he might as well be followed around by his own chorus of angels. Morgan, all gruff growls and puppydog eyes, is a born charmer, and says more with a dimpled, wistful smile than comes across in a page of Rimes’ teary, overheated prose. Not everyone is as lucky. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd has no soul, and the shamefaced Patrick Dempsey looks like he knows it. Ellen Pompeo, the titular Meredith Grey, isn’t a woman, she’s a very needy wet blanket whose only problem seems to be a terminal lack of rudimentary decision-making skills. She’s involved in not one but two triangular relationships; one paramour, the aforementioned McDreamy, can't find the stones to leave his wife when even she has figured out that she comes second in his shallow affections after Meredith Grey; meanwhile Meredith’s terribly cute widower veterinarian, played by Chris O’Donnell, has only one discernible failing - he’s not McDreamy. McBarf.
Of course, the part that really annoys me is the fact that I watched the season finale - all three hours of it - just to see what would happen to Izzie! ::sob:: I have no one but myself to blame for the near-dehydration that resulted. (Man, Katherine Heigl can do suffering!) But I still feel like a chump.