Ready to celebrate? It’s been 20 years since Shondaland opened its doors, and we’re kicking off this anniversary with — what else? — the very first episode of Grey’s Anatomy, which premiered on March 27, 2005. In a three-part series of personal essays, join us as we reflect on the impact the show has had on all of us throughout the years in big and small ways.
I’ll be honest: I had no intention of ever watching Grey’s Anatomy. I was starting out in film school when the show premiered — and I was convinced I had a life ahead of me as an auteur, even though learning about French New Wave and various filmmaking techniques never really added up to me having anything to say in the medium. Grey’s Anatomy on the other hand? That was “just” some network show — a burgeoning “serious” director and filmmaker would never indulge in it.
The ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Pilot Showed Me the Adult I Could Become
My resolve lasted exactly a season and a half. Being a cash-strapped 20-something college student meant that staying home with Two Buck Chuck was usually the limit of my finances. So, when my roommate promised that Grey’s was really a show about “pretty people crying onto their white coats and occasionally solving medical mysteries,” I was convinced.
Here’s the funny thing — good storytelling kills pretension, especially auteur pretension. My resolve to hold Grey’s at arm’s length faltered when I began to feel like those Seattle Grace doctors were a part of my own personal orbit. George was the floppy-haired, emotionally chaotic guy I wanted to date. Izzie was the unbothered beauty with a soft side I longed to be. Cristina was the wildly smart, intimidating one. Alex was the underdog I was rooting for, and Meredith was the dark-and-twisty person I actually was at the time. Even though I didn’t have the words for it, I needed something that spoke to the person I actually was — not just the creator I aspired to be.
While I started to make some headway when it came to my career with overnight PA gigs on crappy Russian candy bar commercials and questionable music videos, Seattle Grace was giving Meredith Grey the first of many near-death experiences. By 2006, when the Super Bowl was overshadowed by that two-part Grey’s Anatomy episode about a bomb in a body, I certainly was far from the only one watching. Conversation about the show felt like a cultural talking point — during my internship at a nearby film studio, a producer overheard me joking about the hold that Grey’s had on me and immediately chimed in. Stopping by his desk to share our thoughts on the latest episode became a Friday morning ritual.
It was through him that I first heard the term “color-blind casting.” In the early aughts, it was considered revolutionary to have a group of people simply exist in their skin while also being talented doctors. It’s not as though Grey’s was trying to shy away from issues of gender, race, and politics — I still think about the shot of Bailey slicing through a swastika tattoo while operating on a Nazi because of her faith in the Hippocratic oath more than I do about any Truffaut film. Rather, it ended up that the breezy nonchalance that Rhimes applied to her cast of characters sent a message. And it stuck with me.
I failed at film school. After a disastrous senior project killed what little love I had left for the medium, I collected my diploma and claimed the title of Los Angeles’ grumpiest bookseller. Grey’s became an adulthood measuring stick — I told myself if the doctors could juggle residency and all the drama that came with working together, surely I could eat rice and beans while selling Brentwood teenagers The Secret, all in the pursuit of figuring out my life, right? (Turns out, no.)
It took six months of my early quarter-life crisis pity party to realize I was mourning a life path I didn’t even want to take. I was not meant to become the next Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, or even Shonda Rhimes. But Grey’s reminded me that what really drove me to film school was a love of storytelling.
Throughout the years, the show has reminded us of its ability to get to the heart of the story even when it’s going big, bigger, biggest on plot points. Alex falling for Ava (aka Rebecca) with amnesia? Absurd, only until you realize it’s a story about how we just want to be seen for who we are. Izzie teaching her interns surgery on a deer? Seems like a waste of time (we have human lives to save, after all!) until you realize she’s teaching radical, bottomless empathy, something invaluable in a doctor. And perhaps in the trickiest piece of writing, Gary Clark, an angry widower who in his grief shoots and kills multiple hospital staff members, is humanized, and we realize his pain was never minimized nor were his actions ever justified — a juggling act that only the most skilled television writers can accomplish. And Derek dying due to medical malpractice — okay, sometimes we need to torment Meredith to advance the plot.
Twenty years later, Grey’s Anatomy is still my Thursday night treat. I may have given up 95 percent of my drinking and 100 percent of my juvenile pity parties, but tuning in to the world of Grey Sloan still raises some of the same questions I was struggling with in my 20s: What does it look like to move through the world as an adult? And how do I do it without losing parts of myself in the process? Life continues to be less prescriptive than I could have ever believed.
I’ll always remember interviewing Lulu Miller, the author of Why Fish Don’t Exist. I was nervous — I consider Miller one of the best journalists working today, and I was convinced that my interview outline barely approached the brilliance of her book. That is, until she mentioned she’s obsessed with all things Shondaland, and we quickly found common ground. The reason for her fandom? Shows like Grey’s pull a neat trick, transporting people out of their malaise and into caring.
“Why am I crying in every episode?” she laughed. “The woman knows how to manipulate me, and I want to steal those tricks! Making someone feel is just hard, and it’s meaningful. I really think she is a genius, and I can’t get enough.”
I found my creative outlet as a writer, and I like to humor myself by thinking that, like Miller, some of Shonda Rhimes’ tricks have influenced the way I work. But the universal lessons of Grey’s Anatomy still sit with me, two decades later. Namely: Don’t be afraid to talk about what you love — and why you love it. Preferably, as loud as possible.
