Truth be told, I haven't watched much of this season's Grey's Anatomy, but I did happen to catch last week's episode, which pretty much caught me up on all that I had missed. Or at least all that I had cared about. When last week's episode ended with our most of our favourite Seattle Grace doctors laying on the ground after the plane they were in crashed, I wasn't surprised. After all, this was the lead-up to a Grey's Anatomy season finale. And Grey's Anatomy season finales were nothing if not dramatic.
If you follow Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes on Twitter you would have known that this was not going to be a sunshine-and-roses type of finale, with Rhimes herself tweeting;
Warning: do not expect to be comforted or happy at end of the GA finale. I wrote it and even I found the ending to be very unsettling.
Uh, unsettling might be a bit of an understatement. The finale juxtaposed the crew that was in the plane crash to the doctors remaining at Seattle Grace, but I'm just going to focus on the plane crash because the rest didn't really matter to me. There are three things I learned while watching last night:
1) No one is safe in a Grey's Anatomy season finale, except for, possibly, MerDer. Rhimes is never afraid to kill off a beloved character (hello, George), so if you thought you were getting out with all your faves intact, surprise! No such luck.
2) Seattle Grace very well might be cursed. From hostage situations to bombs to plane crashes -- as Christina Yang said -- Seattle Grace is cursed and everyone needs to get the hell away. Just once I would love a season finale that wasn't about some kind of trauma-inducing incident. Or would I?
3) Christina Yang is the best damn character on that show, and Sandra Oh is a genius for playing her the way she does. From her constant ramblings about her missing shoe to the best line that was delivered the entire show -- "I've got PTSD so I'm unreliable" -- Christina Yang is the very best part of Grey's Anatomy and the Meredith/Yang relationship is probably the most true friendship on network television.
So, yes, Shonda, last night's episode was unsettling to say the least, but it got me wanting more, and wanting to know what the next season will hold for my favorite Seattle Grace doctors. Which, for someone who spent the better half of the season not caring about the show, is a welcome feeling. Watching last night, I felt like Yang when she said, "How does this keep happening?! How do we keep dying?" I felt like we'd seen it all before, but then I realized that this is when Grey's is the best. This is when Rhimes sucks you in and makes you care so much for the characters that she's created with such artfulness that you find yourself wishing the next few months away so that the season premiere would be here already. Yes, as much as I felt like I'd seen this season finale before, I realized that's how I like my Grey's Anatomy -- tragic, graphic and in crisis. This finale was worth the wait, and I will be back for more in September.