Wedding planning is a frustrating experience. No, I’m not referring to making lots of phone calls or fretting about making the wrong decisions about music. I’m talking about all the bad jokes. Being a guy, you have to put up with a lot of crap. Everyone assumes you’ve done nothing other than pick a color for your vest and try some cake. Everyone makes terrible, terrible jokes about how you should get used to saying, “yes dear.”
I don’t hold Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel in high esteem, but something they said a few years ago has stuck with me. They were talking about how they were sick of how men are portrayed. Think of a sitcom or a TV commercial where the wife has to go away, and the man either tries to make dinner and ruins it, or immediately goes to get take-out. In the process he probably also burns a hole in a shirt trying to iron it, and more than likely uses something inappropriate to feed or clothe a baby. Men aren’t given much credit, and never have been. I’m okay with that. I have a degree in Cultural Studies, for that matter, and I understand why our culture loves these terrible jokes and makes these hilarious assumptions about our incompetence. We have their place, and we say things out of our station, everyone assumes we don’t know what we’re talking about.
Which brings me to Grey’s Anatomy. It’s not as good as you think it is. It’s not a bad show, it’s just not great. I’ve been saying this since the bomb in the body cavity episode and, whenever I deign to express the notion that the show isn’t the greatest acheivement in broadcasting since the FM band, I get the exact same response: you obviously just don’t get it. A few years ago I made similar statements about Sex in the City to similar disgust from lots of people. If I say something bad about the show, it must be because I’m a guy and I don’t get it. It’s not possible for someone to just think the show isn’t all that great. Either you love it, or you don’t get it.
I have to give people credit, this is an excellent form of argument. “If you understand the show, then you think it’s great. Clearly you don’t understand it, therefore you don’t think it’s great.” It’s impossible for me to demonstrate that I in fact do understand the show, because by their modus ponens anyone who did would love it. I can say that I’ve seen every episode (I have), that I’ve seen enough other TV to compare it to (I have), and I’ve studied enough narrative art to understand the form (I have), but still, if you’ve decided that I don’t get the show, I can’t demonstrate to you that I do.
There’s an episode of The Simpsons called A Millhouse Divided (bless Wikipedia for having individual entries on Simpsons episodes). In it, Millhouse’s parents gets a divorce, and his dad loses his job at the cracker factory. His boss says:
Kirk, crackers are a family food. Happy families. Maybe single people eat crackers; we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we can do without.
This is how television works. Maybe black people watch television; we don’t know. Maybe gay people watch television; we don’t know. Maybe women watch television; we don’t know. Being a white male aged 18-35 there are plenty of programs for me to watch. So many, to borrow a phrase, I have to pay a robot to watch them for me. Suddently Grey’s Anatomy appears on primetime television and it has strong female characters and everyone treats it like it’s the greatest thing on the air. How could a show that features strong female characters not be a great show?
I don’t dispute that people love it. It even beat CSI in the ratings for its season premier. It’s a hugely popular show, and it deserves its popularity. It’s not a bad show, I just don’t think it’s the great show everyone says it is.
Anyway, to get to the point:
- Guys can have opinions about “girl stuff”. I hate having my views dismissed out of hand just because I’m a guy. Consider that it’s actually possible for me to both know what I’m talking about and disagree with you.
- It’s sad that there are only a few shows on that feature strong female characters. (Watch this video of Joss Whedon talking about that. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) I submit that just because a show does have strong female characters does not automatically make it hall of fame material. A show can have good characters and still not be a great show, and a show can be a great show and have no women in it. The rare show that does both is worthy of praise.
In conclusion, Meredith is a terrible lead character who’s never given me any reason to care about her high school level crush. That finale that you thought was so great would have been an excellent one-hour piece, but stretching it over two nights meant 30-45 minutes of downtime including a horrid “I’m Spartacus” routine that ruined the momentum between Izzy deciding to worsen Denny’s condition, him getting the heart, and him dying, which was the central story. And Carrie and Samantha et al’s banter never felt natural and none of those actresses has any comedic timing.