Over the course of 21 seasons, Grey’s Anatomy fans have loved and lost a plethora of different characters. While some people, like Casey Parker, only hang around for a couple of years, men like Alex Karev help to shape the show into the powerhouse that it is today. Although he waved goodbye to the hospital in Season 16, fans still see Karev as an integral asset to the show’s canon.
Those who have been watching the show since the beginning will know that Alex Karev first appeared in the pilot episode “A Hard Day’s Night.” But now that the show is available on streaming platforms like Disney+, fans have noticed that his character looks really odd compared to the rest. It turns out that Karev wasn’t actually included in the show’s original pilot and wasn’t meant to be in the show at all.
Grey’s Anatomy Needed a Bad Boy
The TV industry changed forever when the Grey’s Anatomy pilot, “A Hard Day’s Night,” aired in 2005. In the opening scene, we are introduced to Meredith Grey, a strong-willed and determined intern who has just realized that she’s had a one-night stand with her boss, Derek Shepherd. Later on, the audience meets Meredith’s peers: Cristina Yang, George O’Malley, and Izzie Stevens, all of whom are just as nervous as she is.
Throughout their first 48-hour shift at the prestigious Seattle Grace Hospital, they meet their superiors, Miranda Bailey, Preston Burke, and Richard Webber. Even though she’s only been there for a few hours, Meredith starts a conflict with Izzie, who believes that she’s only sleeping with Derek to get ahead of her peers. After watching George kill his first patient and witnessing a teenager suffer an unexpected seizure, Meredith realizes that her internship is going to be a lot more difficult than she first expected. To top things off, fans discover that Meredith is the daughter of a renowned surgeon called Ellis Grey, who also previously had an elusive affair with Richard Webber.
However, fans may be wondering how Alex Karev fits into all of this. While he was a part of the pilot episode, his character wasn’t included in the original script. After showing the pilot to test audiences, viewers agreed that the show needed some sort of antagonist to keep the tension flowing. Although Izzie and Meredith were rubbing each other up the wrong way, the team felt that their slight feud wasn’t enough to keep fans interested because it just seemed like typical snobbery and immature bullying. Tony Phelan, one of Grey’s Anatomy’s most prominent showrunners, explains that one of the most common pieces of feedback was:
You need a bad boy. You need a male member of the intern class who’s not just an asshole, but male.
As such, Justin Chambers was cast as Alex Karev shortly after the original pilot was shot. So, the team went a step further and decided to CGI him into the episode, making it seem like he was in the hospital the entire time. Not only does this explain why Alex isn’t introduced until halfway into the episode, but it also gives more context for why he looks so strange. Although audiences in 2005 may not have been able to tell the difference, modern viewers have suggested that Karev looks slightly softer than his counterparts and that his surroundings have been airbrushed. Luckily, a lot of contemporary viewers were able to look past this bit of TV magic and instantly fell in love with Karev’s teasing charm.
Grey’s Anatomy Experienced a Plethora of Other Changes
Everyone in the hospital looks up in Grey’s Anatomy.Image via ABC
Although Shonda Rhimes’ script was relatively well-received, there’s no denying that she was forced to make some major changes. Most surprisingly, her first draft of “A Hard Day’s Night” didn’t include the signature voiceover segment that fans expect from every episode. Instead, the director wanted to use a tight and out-of-focus lens to scan over Meredith’s naked body to show that she had just slept with Derek Shepherd.
The camera would then suddenly snap back into focus as soon as Grey opened her eyes. Yet, this idea was swiftly scrapped due to time constraints and the fact that Rhimes was keen to start her opening episode with a bang. Another issue with the first script was that it was far too long, and a lot of Rhimes’ teammates struggled to think of a way that they could mold her ideas into a suitable 45-minute episode. The script also referenced the fact that Preston Burke and Richard Webber could be related, something that would have completely altered the Grey’s Anatomy canon.
Grey’s Anatomy is one of the most popular medical dramas around, but that doesn’t mean that there were moments when fans dropped the series.
Despite its success, the foundations of Grey’s Anatomy were not fully established until much later in the production process. The show didn’t even have a proper name until most of its pilot cast were on board. A lot of the characters also had very different traits, like Preston Burke, who was originally imagined as a white man played by Paul Aldesten, who would later go on to star as Cooper Freedman in Private Practice. Ironically, Ellen Pompeo was also very reluctant to star in the show, mostly because she didn’t enjoy watching medical dramas and also had dreams of starring in feature-length films.
All of these changes are more than surprising fun facts. Instead, they show just how far Grey’s Anatomy has come from its humble beginnings and also how hard the team had to fight to get a show like that on the air. Although Americans love medical dramas, a lot of contemporary audiences prefer softer approaches to life-or-death situations. It wasn’t until ER came along that TV started to appreciate hard-hitting medical dramas. But, not only did Grey’s Anatomy feature a woman, but it featured a female protagonist who wanted to change the face of her male-dominated industry. When fans recognize this, they learn that it doesn’t really matter that the pilot had to be changed so many times because Rhimes had faith in Meredith Grey and knew that her character was enough to make this show a multi-million-dollar success.
Alex Karev Eventually Became Grey’s Anatomy’s Leading Man
It seems that even though the pilot episode was very different from the original script, and it contained a wealth of really bad CGI, fans and critics loved the show. During its initial airing, the episode reached 16.25 million viewers in the US alone, which is a staggering figure even by 2005’s standards. Despite being a fast-paced medical show, critics compared Grey’s Anatomy to its contemporary Desperate Housewives, rather than its predecessor ER. Its sexy themes and positive representation of women reminded audiences of the nuances of Wisteria Lane. As such, this also kickstarted a trend of ABC producing a string of other popular dramas such as Lost and Ugly Betty.
Aside from the awkward CGI blunders seen in the pilot episode, Alex Karev slid into the show perfectly. On the surface, he seemed like a perfect womanizer, but once fans learned more about his traumatic past, they discovered that Karev was a troubled soul who just wanted to get his life back on track. It could also be argued that when Derek died in Season 11, Alex Karev was promoted to the show’s leading man role. While he didn’t necessarily have an intimate relationship with Meredith at this point, the two built a rather admirable friendship. Without Derek or Cristina by her side, Meredith was forced to form a relationship with someone else who had also been by her side since the beginning. Thus, by the time Alex Karev waved goodbye to Seattle Grace in 2020, fans had watched him grow from an immature love rat into a kind-hearted surgeon and gentleman.
Alex Karev starred in 343 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy during his 16-year run on the show.
Justin Chambers has also seen a ton of success through his work on Grey’s Anatomy, proving that even though he wasn’t included in the original script, he’s still a major contributor to the show’s success. In 2006, the show won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, an award he proudly shared with the rest of the cast. Thus, even though his final episode wasn’t exactly appreciated by fans, Alex Karev altered the trajectory of Grey’s Anatomy, and the show exemplified that even the most stubborn of characters can have a change of heart.
