Ellen Pompeo confirmed on Instagram Thursday that last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was the last you’ll see of her...at least for now.
“I am eternally grateful and humbled by the love and support you have all shown me, Meredith GREY and the show for 19 seasons! Through it all….none of it …would have been possible without the best fans in the world,” she wrote, thanking the audience that has watched her play Meredith Grey for 18-and-a-half seasons. “You all are RIDERS and you all have made the ride so fun and ICONIC!!”
It’s a historic announcement; a run this long and this popular as the lead of a drama series is rare. And, frankly, our girl deserves a break. Let’s discuss.
In Season 12 of Grey’s Anatomy, a patient with a brain injury attacked Meredith. She was left on the ground, shaking and battered, as the doctors around her tended to other traumas, unaware she was practically dying in a curtained-off room. She lost her hearing for months. She also needed her jaw wired shut.
Mind you, this is 12 seasons deep. In the dozen or so years prior, Meredith nearly exploded by means of a rogue bomb in a patient’s chest cavity, drowned in the Seattle harbor, lost her mother to Alzheimers, watched her husband get shot in the chest, survived being held at gunpoint, miscarried, adopted an African child, lost custody of said African child, regained custody of that child, survived a plane crash, watched her sister be eaten by wolves, gave birth during a hosptial-wide power outage, and lost her husband in a freak car accident.
Simply bearing witness to Meredith Grey’s life is enough trauma for a lifetime. Imagining an actual human going through it is… asinine.
So when it was announced this summer that Pompeo would be scaling back her work on the show after 18 seasons, I felt a sense of relief—for Meredith and the actress that has played her so dutifully for nearly two decades. The plan was for Pompeo to appear in only eight episodes of Season 19. In last week’s episode, Meredith moved to Boston for a new job and for daughter to attend a better school, effectively writing the character off the show. It was the midseason finale before a months-long hiatus.
Shrewd fans will note that Pompeo has only appeared in six episodes so far, so there is an expectation that she could be back for more after the hiatus. Still, there is something final and momentous about what the actress wrote in her Instagram message to fans: “I love you madly and appreciate you right back. This isn’t your first time on the rollercoaster… you know the show must go on and I’ll definitely be back to visit. With a lot of love and immense gratitude.”
Sure, this is the title role. Pompeo is the “Grey” of Grey’s Anatomy. But this could be a good thing for the show. Gauging by her Instagram caption, Pompeo knows that, too.
I think that maybe, over the years, we’ve gotten our assessment of Grey’s Anatomy wrong. When the show premiered in 2005, the first season was a pitch perfect medical drama that mixed a bit of melodrama with sexy shenanigans. In the pilot, pageant queen Katie Bryce did not explode or shoot anyone or even offer up social commentary. She simply had a difficult to diagnose aneurysm, and the only way she would survive is if inexperienced surgical interns Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang could figure out what was going on with her. They were ill-equipped, misguided twenty-somethings tasked with saving someone’s life.
Diehards know that Katie Bryce not only survived, but lived to come back to the hospital a couple times over. And as beloved of a patient as she is, we’ve largely forgotten about the Katie Bryces of the world, instead getting sidetracked by the series’ shock scenarios: The plane crashes and mass shootings and hospital fires that plague this God-forsaken Seattle hospital.
The truth is that Grey’s Anatomy was at its finest when it took no-nothing interns and turned them into something great, all while offering thoughtful, organic commentary on the world around it. The series’ populist apex was when Katherine Heigl’s Dr. Izzie Stevens went absolutely bananagrams and cut a man’s LVAD wire with the hope that he’d get a heart transplant. It was insane! But it wasn’t farfetched. It was something that an impetuous, sleep-deprived young adult might do because emotions enveloped logic (Not saying it’s particularly excusable, or even legal, but still).
Moreover, it made for some exceptional television.
With the current season, the series took a risk on five new interns. They are two men and three women, much like the debut season. But instead of half-betting on them like the series has done with intern classes of yesteryear, Grey’s Anatomy made the narrative decision to go all in, crafting a fleshed out storyline for each one in the same way the series did back in 2005. These interns are optimistic and flawed, arrogant and yet oddly worthy of being championed. Meanwhile, the attendings who’ve come before them are dealing with, largely, mature adult problems that are beyond the years of the interns below them. For once, the burden of plot has been pushed off to the younger generation.
That’s where the heart of Grey’s Anatomy should have always been. The “anatomy” of it all is figuring out how to exist in this adult world, as a functioning surgeon who is as capable in their personal lives as they are in the operating room. I’m reminded of a quote from Meredith in the first season, where she says, “We're adults. When did that happen? And how do we make it stop?” After 19 years, the writers of Grey’s Anatomy have taken these characters from the first season and allowed them to graduate. It’s not that being an adult has gotten any easier (for instance, in season 19’s midseason finale, Meredith’s long-time home burned to the ground). But the trials and tribulations don’t have to be so impossibly overwrought.
In some ways, it feels like a fitting goodbye. The original house is burned down, but on the outskirts, Meredith clutches the framed post-it note that she and her deceased husband once scribbled vows on in the resident locker room.
As painful as it is to admit, Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t need Meredith anymore. Not in the way it once did, at least. And that’s a good thing because it means that she has found some semblance of peace—the conclusion to one of the most beloved lines from the series: Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.
From what has been reported, Pompeo will linger around to do voiceovers for each episode and appear in the occasional finale. And that’s how it should be. Grey’s Anatomy will always belong to its leading woman, but for Grey’s Anatomy to thrive into its twenties (gulp!), it has to be willing to allow its tone, not its characters, to dictate the narrative. As the series enters its twenties, it’s recognizing that the most relatable piece of its plot is that no one in their twenties knows what the hell they’re doing. And that’s a disaster that never grows old.
