In the wake of allegations made against porn star James Deen by his ex-partner and fellow porn performer Stoya, as well as several other performers, both Ann Friedman and Amanda Hess attempt to unpack what it means when women hold men who express feminist sentiments up as feminist heroes. [The Cut, Slate]
I also recapped Outback Championship Wrestling’s latest show.
And I hosted their podcast, chatting to Ricardo Rodriguez.
While we’re shamelessly self-promoting, I’m also at Bitch Flicks writing about Shondaland’s bad mothers. More bad mother content to come in next week’s collection.
The Good Wife‘s Alicia Florrick’s wardrobe changes as her character does. I’ve just started watching this series so it’s interesting to see the looks I’m familiar with and how Alicia changes over the subsequent four seasons I’m yet to watch. [The Hairpin]
These lyric intelligence ratings from pop songs from the past ten years made my blood boil. More to come next week. [Seat Smart]
But I, for one, am excited to see where this hasty writing out of actor Patrick Dempsey will take Meredith Grey and the rest of the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about all the affecting, tragic deaths Grey’s Anatomy viewers have been subjected to over the years and they’ve all served as moments of growth for the characters: Izzie built a clinic for patients without insurance with the money Denny left her; Teddy’s husband’s death served as the catalyst to disrupt her friendship with Owen and to eventually leave the hospital; Lexie and Mark’s deaths influenced the change in hospital name and administration; and Dr. Thomas dying whilst operating with Cristina led her to return to Seattle.
In the episodes following Derek’s death, I was hoping for more of an exploration of the grief Meredith et al. were experiencing. Instead, about nine months of Meredith and her children’s lives flew by in one ninety minute episode as she found out she was pregnant with another child for her and Derek and fled Seattle as her mother did so many years ago.
But we’ve seen the “dark and twisty” Meredith, dwelling on her distant and sick mother, her father’s abandonment, Lexie’s death, George’s death, and now Derek’s death, so maybe, with the birth of Derek’s posthumous child, Meredith will come out the other side with a lighter perspective on life. The final scene of last night’s episode, with her taking sisters Maggie and Amelia’s hands and leading them to “dance it out” at Richard and Catherine’s wedding, would seem to indicate this.
This is not to say that grief won’t resurface as a theme of season twelve, which the show has been renewed for.
There might be hope for that yet as showrunner Shonda Rhimes said that “Meredith and the entire Grey’s Anatomy family are about to enter uncharted territory as we head into this new chapter of her life. The possibilities for what may come are endless. As Ellis Grey would say: The carousel never stops turning.”
Grey’s Anatomy has long ceased to be about the love affair between Meredith and Derek, anyway; hell, Derek was barely in this season as he took a job in Washington D.C. For the last two seasons, at least, the show has focussed on Meredith, her work and her friendships. In the aftermath of season eight’s plane crash, we saw Cristina flee for Minnesota while Meredith was left to cope with the death of her sister and an impending pregnancy. Cristina may be gone now, but the bonds between Alex and Meredith have strengthened, being the only two of their intern class to last in Seattle. The introduction of long lost sister Maggie and the return of Amelia means Meredith has other women to turn to, however begrudgingly.
But, if season twelve is the show’s last, it might make sense that Meredith’s pregnancy and disappearance were rushed. Despite Grey’s Anatomy being known as a show that rips beloved characters from Grey Sloan when we least expect it, perhaps it would like to go out with a celebration of the lives of the doctors still lucky enough to be practicing there. And the lives they’ve saved.
If Grey’s Anatomy knows how to do one thing (apart from stay on the air for eleven seasons despite most people being ignorant to its longevity) it’s a tragic death.
In case you didn’t catch last night’s high-stakes episode or were exposed to whisperings of spoilers on social media, Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd, the titular Meredith Grey’s One True Love and Grey Sloane Memorial Hospital’s resident neurosurgeon, departed the earthly realm with a combination of car wreck injuries and shoddy doctoring.
For those who have followed the show for the past decade or just tuned in to see what all the fuss was about, allow me to regale you with Grey’s Anatomy’s top ten death scenes.
Denny Duquette.
When people think of Grey’s Anatomy, they think of its season one-through-three heyday. Smack bang in the middle of that was dreamy heart transplant patient Denny Duquette (played by the equally-as-dreamy Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Izzie going AWOL by cutting Denny’s LVAD wire to move him further up the transplant list. That was all for nothing, though, as Denny later suffered a fatal stroke post-transplant and died. But not before proposing to Izzie.
George O’Malley.
Season five was when Grey’s started to kill its main cast off left, right and centre. It began with the death of original intern George O’Malley, who got hit by a bus by jumping in front of it to save an unknown woman on his way to join the army. Quelle tragédie. To add to the drama, George was brought into the hospital he used to work at as a John Doe patient, his extensive injuries from the accident rendering him unrecognisable. It was Meredith who made the ID, though, when George traced his nickname, 007—license to kill, after he almost did just that to his first patient—into her hand.
Reed Adamson & Charles Percy.
Grey’s didn’t wait long to thrust their next tragedy on its audience: season six’s cliffhanger saw a gunman loose in the hospital, intent on seeking out and killing McDreamy! He managed to hit his target, but not before taking out Mercy West Hospital transfers Reed Adamson and Charles Percy. Just to tug at those heartstrings even further, as Percy lay dying in Dr. Miranda Bailey’s (and Mandy Moore’s!) arms, he asked her to tell Reed that he loved her. Excuse me, there’s something in my eye.
Henry.
Having watched Scott Foley more recently on Scandal, it’s hard to believe Dr. Teddy Altman’s husband died all the way back in season eight. His love for Teddy started when he was her patient and she was involved with another man. Thought they only married so Henry could receive Teddy’s health insurance, Teddy soon fell in love with him only for him to die on the table whilst Teddy’s protege Cristina Yang was operating on him. Henry was somewhat of a Manic Pixie Dream Husband, serving as the catalyst for Teddy to break off her friendship with Chief Owen Hunt when he elected not to tell her that Henry had died until after she finished her own surgery.
Lexie Grey.
It seems that one season (seven) without a catastrophe was enough so season eight took us out with a bang. Or, more specifically, a plane crash. Derek’s hand was mangled and Arizona wound up losing a leg, but it was clear that Lexie bore the brunt of the crash, getting pinned under some debris. As Grey’s is wont to do, at least she got to tell Mark she loved him.
Mark Sloan.
Which brings us to McSteamy. He was also involved in the crash but, along with Meredith and Cristina, seemed to escape relatively unscathed. It wasn’t until the first two episodes of the following season that we realised the extent of his injuries, which saw him succumb in hospital. Why you gotta do me like that, Grey’s?
Dr. Thomas.
In season nine Cristina took a job at the world famous Mayo Clinic to escape “Seattle Grace Mercy Death”. Without her “person” Meredith and traumatised from last season’s plane crash, “dinosaur” cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Thomas takes Cristina under his wing only to die in the OR during surgery. While not as catastrophic as many of Grey’s other deaths, this one was positioned as yet another tragedy in Cristina’s life.
Heather Brooks.
Season nine’s cliffhanger saw a freak storm hit Seattle, flooding the hospital’s generator and leaving them without power. Intern Ross was sent to find Dr. Webber who was sussing out the damage in the basement however, not wanting to miss out on surgery, he roped intern Heather (played by Tina Majorino) into it which ultimately led to her (and Dr. Webber’s) electrocution. Only one doctor survived.
Derek Shepherd.
How many personal tragedies can one person handle?! Meredith has drowned, watched her husband get shot, almost become “pink mist” in a bomb threat, watched her mother try to commit suicide, been abandoned by her father (twice!), given birth in the middle of a massive storm that caused a power outage at the hospital and been in a plane crash in which her sister and husband’s best friend died. Phew!
But last night she faced perhaps the biggest tribulation when her husband Derek Shepherd died. Having saved four people from a car wreck on his way to the airport, we thought Derek would escape unscathed only to have a truck round the corner and ram his car. At the hospital, the doctors stated that they were not equipped to treat such trauma and rushed to treat Derek’s abdominal injuries instead of checking for brain swelling. By the time they realised he needed brain surgery and paged the on-call neurosurgeon, who was 90 minutes away, Derek was braindead. Oh, the tragic irony.
Honorable mentions: Meredith’s distant mother, dying after a long battle with Alzheimer’s; Lexie’s mum, who died after a routine exploratory surgery for reflux, spurring Meredith’s father to disown her… again; Bonnie (who you might remember as Dawson’s Creek’s Abby, a patient impaled by a pole) and Dylan, the bomb squad guy, were both very affecting losses to Meredith in early seasons; Doc, Meredith’s cancer-ridden dog who was then adopted by Derek and Addison; April and Jackson’s surprise pregnancy ended in tragedy as they had to terminate due to a fatal birth defect; Adele, Richard Webber’s wife, died of a heart attack after surgery for an aneurism.
Which Grey’s Anatomy deaths affected you the most?
*Spoiler alert for all eleven seasons of Grey’s Anatomy.
How will you know when you’ve made it? For me I think it will be when I’ve been published a) on Daily Life and b) in the American market; headhunted for something; verified on Twitter; and when those I admire in the same industry see me as a peer. How will you know? [The Hairpin]
If these links haven’t sated your appetite for feminist goodness, the 83rd Down Under Feminists Carnival has arrived featuring much more from Australia and New Zealand. [Opinions @ BlueBec]
Leisure time is a feminist issue. I know it certainly is for me. I hate cooking so I make sure I’ve got enough food to last me lunches and dinners on the days I work ’cause the last thing I want to do is come home and spend my spare time preparing food. On the work front, I’m really busy with three jobs (day job, freelancing, Outback Championship Wrestling) and I was recently offered at (paid!) internship but I had to turn it down because I’m already burning the candle at both ends. And that’s the reason I won’t have kids: I don’t want to be an angry, resentful mother like my own mother sometimes was because I don’t have enough time for myself and no one appreciates me. So in a nutshell: I can relate. [Daily Life]
Summer is usually a time when I catch up on TV shows I’ve neglected throughout the year.
In Australia, (when I owned a TV) all the shows would be on hiatus and in its place tennis and cricket as far as the eye can see. Likewise, American TV comes to a halt usually from about Thanksgiving which gives me ample time to keep up with the Kardashians or, in a more high brow vein, Breaking Bad, which I finally watched in its entirety this time last year.
Recently I lamented to a friend that this summer I’ve been watching more movies and, like, reading instead of catching up on shows like I should be. There’s so many on my list: The Good Wife, Orphan Black, Parks & Rec, House of Cards. I didn’t even watch American Horror Story: Freak Show when it started a few months ago and, low and behold, it just aired its season finale.
So what better time to catch up on it than this past (long) weekend? (And yes, I am well aware that AHS cannot be construed as women-friendly, but stay with me.)
I also have ample days off from my day job in the next week so, in addition to more freelance work and my side gig at OCW, I should be able to finish the 13 episode season by the next weeks’ end.
I intend to work just as hard throughout the year, but I also need to make sure I engage in self-care to keep the momentum up. So when I’ve emptied out my brain onto the page and filled it again with the words of others, what better way to unwind with some TV that functions as a hug?
I’ve been very vocal about my love for Grey’s Anatomy: when I was sick a few weeks ago, I knew I should have started one of the abovementioned shows but I just needed comforting in a way that no one but Meredith Grey and co. could do, so I rewatched the first half of this season. It, along with its Shondaland cohorts Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, return this week and I’ve got a hot date with the Middleton Law School kids and President Grant on the weekend.
From there, I intend to either dip into The Good Wife or House of Cards as research for a piece I’ve been ruminating over for months. While the beauty of many Netflix-based shows is their short seasons allowing quick consumption, there’s a good six seasons of The Good Wife, so who knows when I’ll emerge from Alicia Florrick’s law offices?
In contrast to the abovementioned shows, it was only a few years ago that many of the books, movies and TV shows that I was drawn to were about men. My favourite authors were men, the movies I was interested in seeing at the cinema were about men, and many of the TV shows I watched were all about men. Don’t get me wrong, some of my favourite authors are still men (Dominick Dunne and Mick Foley), and I’m hanging out to see Foxcatcher at the movies. But on the whole, I’m so fucking sick of only learning about men’s lives—either real or fictional.
That’s why, this year, I’m making a conscious effort to consume media about women and minorities. What started out as something I was completely unaware of has blossomed into a newfound appreciation for the voices of women I may not have sought out before. I’ve slowly started to realise that all the shows I watch are about women—OITNB, Total Divas, Girls, Revenge, 2 Broke Girls, The Mindy Project—as are the shows I intend to. I’ve only recently started watching movies again, and I started with Nora Ephron’s cannon over Christmas and New Years. Wild is the next movie I intend to see at the cinema. And my reading list from the past month has consisted of Roxane Gay, Janet Mock, Donna Tartt, Lena Dunham, Brigid Delaney and Amy Poehler, amongst many others.
Which shows—and other media—are you looking forward to consuming this year?
The Scarlett Woman 