“Shonda's 100 Super Secret Rules”
Members of the Grey's Anatomy community at TWoP, dismayed by the downward spiral from Season 1 to Season 3 of our once-favorite show, recently began speculating about the “rules” that apparently govern character behavior and plot development for the series. The following guide is the work of many professional and non-professional, married and unmarried, dedicated contributors and we offer it as a helpful resource for everyone involved with Grey's Anatomy.
“Shonda's 100 Super Secret Rules”
1. When a woman exercises her right to choose, she will invariably be cursed with infertility.
2. A “curvy” woman of color or ethnicity will invariably lose her husband to someone who conforms to society's standard of beauty. Even better if aforementioned husband has to mention it to curvy wife so the audience will not miss the subtext.
3. Adultery is a good thing and the best path to true love. Let the wife beware.
4. A woman should reflexively accept any marriage proposal. You don't know when another one will come along and you might end up an old maid. Every girl secretly wants a Big Princess Wedding!
5. Strong, well-educated women don't confront their problems. They try to drown themselves.
6. A woman cannot be both a mother AND Chief Resident.
7. Babies fix failing marriages.
8. Good women risk sabotaging their own careers to save those of their boyfriends.
9. Wedding cake is the most important thing ever. If you cannot get excited about flour, eggs, milk, butter and other various ingredients covered by white frosting, you are obviously emotionally frigid and cannot get married.
10. The future of your relationship with your soul mate for whom you have pined for the past year completely hinges on whether or not your best friend gets married. Cancelled wedding = need to break up with said soul mate (albeit somewhat obtusely) in front of a church full of people.
11. Women cannot have it all. So don't even try.
12. We don't like you if you do have it all!
13. If a man cheats on his wife, it's all her fault.
14. If a man flirts with other women on the day of his girlfriend's stepmother's funeral, it's all her fault.
15. If a man gets caught doing something wrong and his girlfriend tried to help him, it's all her fault.
16. If a man leaves a woman at the altar, it's all her fault.
17. If a woman cheats on a man, she must be punished for life. If a man cheats on a woman, he didn't really do anything wrong and she has no right to be angry with him. *
18. Women don't need to figure out what their priorities should be in work or relationships, because there will always be a man to come along and make the decision for them.
19. Only a man knows what will make a woman truly happy. She certainly can't figure it out for herself.
20. Inconsistency in a female character is a sign of emotional weakness. Inconsistency in a male character is a sign of emotional strength. Inconsistency in a television writer is a sign of awesome genius. *
21. If you watch an actor on a TV screen professing his love and press your face close enough to it, he's talking to you.
22. A good marriage with true love forever is when your husband ignores you for work, denies you children AND cheats on you with another woman. But after the other woman dies and he gets old and gray and dyes his hair and his “moves” no longer work in the bars, he makes up for it all and lets you know that the last 40 years have been worth it. He gets you a glass of water. What more could a woman ask for?
23. If your best friend gets married and you don’t like his wife, just have drunk sex with him and don’t feel bad about it because EVERYONE cheats on their spouses. *
24. Dark & Twisty is the new Bright & Shiny. *
25. If a female surgeon steals a heart from another man’s chest to save her fiancé of 25 minutes and said fiancé dies anyway, she may feel free to wallow in self pity and be sure everyone knows about it UNTIL she hooks up with the best friend from Rule 23. At that point, mourning should immediately cease because this new relationship will be recognized as true love within 12 hours. Furthermore, she will feel no remorse regarding her desire to steal the best friend/new soul mate from his wife because she’s a “pretty girl”. *
26. A degree from an Ivy League university does not come with a certificate of mental and emotional competence.
27. Love makes you stupid. (This one is true for both men and women, so no Izzie Rider applies.)
28. Stealing a heart = 8 million dollars!
29. A man can stay with a woman for 11 years without being in love with her, yet cannot spend one month with the love of his life.
30. It is perfectly okay to sleep with a woman who is drunk off her *** even though common sense tells you that her judgment skills are somewhere in the bottom of a shot glass when you are perfectly sober and supposedly capable of making clear decisions.
31. Sleeping with said woman from Rule 30 later entitles you to call her a ***** when she repeats this behavior with others.
32. Teachers should have sex with students and also use their position of power to punish them if the relationship isn’t exactly what the teacher wants.
33. “No” means “Yes” in Shondaland and she doesn’t give a damn what message this is sending to the teenyboppers who love her show.
34. Being a career woman means never having to date outside the workplace.
35. If you are a professional woman - let’s say a world-renowned neonatal surgeon with certifications in multiple other specialties - you cannot apply for a higher position even if your qualifications exceed those of all the other candidates combined, because Blind Freddy can see that professional qualifications aside, if you need a job to give you a life, you need either a new job or a new life!
36. Adultery is true love when a woman is cheated on. Adultery is evil when a man is cheated on.
37. When a male attending sleeps with an intern, it is the path to true love and marriage plans. When a female attending sleeps with an intern, it is the path to humiliation, rejection and/or being cheated on days after getting married.
38. You cannot sleep with anyone else after breaking up with your boyfriend until he is okay with it. Any sex before this acceptance period ends makes you a *****. *
39. If your boyfriend is not aware that you broke up with him, even though you did so in person and to his face, you are double the ***** for sleeping with someone else before the acceptance period ends. It does not matter if he realized that you dumped him before he found out that you slept with someone else. Appropriate shunning and extreme feelings of guilt apply. *
40. If you are a boyfriend, Rules 38 & 39 do not apply. See Rules 17, 36 and/or 37 depending on relationship status. **
41. If you really want a job, you cannot have it unless you are or have been a married man who cheated on his wife.
42. Just when you think your life cannot get worse, it will. *
43. It doesn’t matter that you’re a thirty-something woman with an M.D. who wants to be a surgeon; you’re still that immature child who can’t handle a relationship or even finish a sentence.
44. In hospitals, residents fold bed sheets.
45. If a woman needs time for herself, it’s called shutting her boyfriend out and is bad. If a man needs time for himself, it’s called “taking space” or “walking away” and is considered romantic.
46. Telling your girlfriend that flirting with another woman was the highlight of your week, even after said girlfriend lost her entire family in one fell swoop, does not make you an ***. It means the girl is in the wrong because she should always be there to stroke her man’s ego.
47. Every medical case exists only to teach the patient’s doctors how to deal with their emotional problems. This rule applies double for female doctors but only half the time for men.
48. When you run out of bosses/co-workers to sleep with, why not sleep or “fall in love” with a patient? Being in need of surgery doesn’t mean they’re not up for a roll in the hay.
49. When a woman falls in love with a patient, it is frowned upon. When a man falls for a patient, he is encouraged by his attending. *
50. Everyone has sex with more than four people within one year. Otherwise they’re just pathetic, miserable losers who deserve to die alone. In Shondaland it’s the norm, people - get with it.
51. Platonic relationships are a myth. So are happy, healthy, stable, romantic relationships.
52. Life is symmetric, so don’t expect to move on. *
53. Being a good writer = the need to explain everything that happens in your show through an outside source so your viewers can decipher the basic plotline. The explanation involves fangirl squealing, at least five sentences that begin, “Ahhh…..the (insert character/relationship here) of it all” and every episode contains your “favorite scene ever.”
54. When viewers complain that Season 2 was depressing, obviously they really mean “lighthearted,” thus Season 3 must be less “lighthearted” than Season 2.
55. When your audience is mostly female, inject as much male chauvinism into your writing as humanly possible.
56. No character should even consider filing a lawsuit when the Chief Resident’s selection is based solely on the candidates’ private lives.
57. Addendum to #51: Friendship = Foreplay.
58. If a female chooses her career over her family she will lose her children.
59. A pregnancy/birth is simply an unnecessary obstacle that will either cause problems or be used by vicious, manipulative women who wish to achieve vile ends like salvaging their marriage (i.e. Bailey’s career falling to pieces after the birth of her child, Cristina’s relationship seemingly being revived by her miscarriage, Callie using her wish to become a mother against the happiness of Gizzard, Addison’s desire to have a child leading exclusively to misery.)
60. Mills and Boons is the bible upon which all relationships should be based.
61. Women like to be called ****** by self-righteous men. Seriously, we do, and often.
62. McSteamy should be seen and heard in only a towel. Seriously, and often.
63. Women are fickle. McMen are gods.
64. A hospital can only have one cardiothoracic surgeon, one neurosurgeon, one plastic surgeon and one super surgeon who deals with anything and everything related to women and babies.
65. If sex takes place in a bed, it is boring, emotionless and thus doomed (rule applies double if sex is between a married couple.) If sex takes place in an exam room, supply closet, elevator or other illicit place, it is hot, exciting and oh so romantic.
67. Free clinics only take $8 million and eight days to be fully operational.
68. If you insult a gay co-worker and are fired, it is ALWAYS the gay co-worker’s fault.
69. There is only one hotel in Seattle.
70. Triage Shonda-style means finding one victim at the disaster scene and then abandoning all other victims to ride with “yours” to the hospital.
71. If your last name is Grey, you will either die, almost die or someone close to you will die.
72. Meredith Exception: If you are Meredith Grey, you will either die or almost die, but your super-hero healing abilities will kick in and have you back to work immediately after a) almost being blown up, b) having your appendix removed, c) trying to drown yourself in the bathtub and d) drowning.
73. Being a millionaire is something you keep hidden by purposely remaining homeless and living in the basement of the hospital. This is especially helpful if you ever apply to be Chief Resident because dude! You can argue that you literally WERE a resident!
74. Not washing your hands after peeing will not only get you excommunicated, but you may be drawn and quartered as well.
75. Green clothing and only green clothing can be worn by men who date Meredith. This is to slap the viewer in the face with a metaphor for the “little green monster” that is Derek’s jealousy.
76. If an intern has a personal problem during work hours, it is okay for that intern to shirk his or her duties. For example, if a surgeon’s scrub cap is missing, you may threaten to physically kick your co-worker’s *** unless he or she finds it. If a member of your family is in the hospital, you may hide in the closet and have a breakdown or pretend that you do not know them. And if a fellow intern “dies,” it is absolutely okay to stand outside his/her door making “I believe” speeches to the congregation of other interns even though half the population of Seattle is dead, in the process of dying or still waiting to be rescued from a horrific disaster so they can die in a later episode. Since every doctor at Seattle Grace Hospital is in the room with that intern, you will be forgiven with regard to the other patients who die on your watch. *
77. The bottom five interns will be cut from the surgical program based on one test score. If everyone gets 98% except five people who get, oh, say, 97%, pack your bags and get the hell out!
78. If you’re female, sacrificing your career for “true love” is always better than having a successful career. This applies double if you come from a trailer park and have had to work ten times as hard to throw it all away.
79. If you are a resident who marries an intern, you will immediately begin to use your husband’s name because all professional women want to take their husband’s name. Corollary - if you divorce your husband, you will have to fight to get people to call you by your maiden name.
80. Once your character-driven drama becomes a hit, you must immediately assassinate the personalities of the characters that your core audience has come to know and love, refuse to write roles for any and all talented guest stars that may be available and kill off half of your recurring cast in one season because that’s what you do when you don’t play be the rules of TV.
81. Backstage drama will be more interesting than anything that appears on screen.
82. Constantly announcing that you're not playing by the rules of TV is just as good and creative as actually refusing to play by the rules of TV, because anything you write in your blog is gospel truth regardless of what viewers see on their TV screens. Remember, it's the blog and podcast that count, not the show.
83. The number of procedures you scrub in on and the number of patients you treat decreases as your internship year progresses.
84. Critically ill patients awaiting a heart transplant require no monitoring devices that alert nurses if said patient's heart actually stops.
85. Complex surgery to separate conjoined twins can be performed within hours after said twins are admitted to the hospital but taking care of the various needs of women crushed under a pylon requires at least 9 weeks of hospitalization.
86. There is no “I” in Grey's Anatomy. And no “W” either.
87. Forget ruby slippers. “Glasses of Hotness” are so powerful that they can actually transport you right off a sinking show.
88. “Smart, funny” shows don't have to actually be smart. Or, well, funny. See “light and fun”. (Also known as “The Aaron Sorkin Rule.”)
89. When you feel really bad about yourself, try sticking a knife in someone else. Or drilling holes in their head.
90. Indecisiveness is good because if you ever decide what you really want, you'll immediately find out you can't have it. *
91. Audiences will enjoy a clever plot twist even more the second or third time you use it.
93. The phrase “I'm fine” means anything but “I'm fine”. You can cover an immense number of lies with the words “I'm fine”.
94. When talking about feelings, communication is primarily limited to the use of literary devices such as metaphors and/or talking in circles (i.e. breathing for people, ***** fish, Burke's poetic “We can't get married because you love me and I love you, but I'm making you do this so I don't love you, and you don't really want to do this so you don't love me, but you do because you are, but I love you because I want to, but I don't because I'm making you because I am Preston Burke.”) *
95. When people liken your show to a soap opera, throw all caution to the wind and start rapidly aging the siblings of your characters so they can come along too.
96. Even though the siblings on the show rapidly age, your main characters do not. For three years, at least.
97. Add siblings and new interns even if your cast is already too large.
98. Getting rid of one male diva with multiple personalities is not the same as culling the herd.
99. Despite all evidence to the contrary, continue to believe you have reached new heights. Do not listen to your viewers who are stuck in the hellhole that you dug and threw them in because you are soaring too high on bad gas and ego-gasms.
100. When in doubt, BURN IT DOWN!!!
* Izzie Rider Applies: Izzie Stevens receives an exemption from any rule that applies to women, interns or medical personnel in general because, well, she's Izzie Stevens.
** Alex Amendment: In exchange for having no interesting storylines, Alex receives an exemption from most boyfriend rules.