Sunday, 26 September 2010

Grey's Anatomy Season 7 Episode 1 'With You I'm Born Again'

'Grey's Anatomyreturns post-shooting and it's time for our Residents to grow and get married...




What's it about?
The staff tries to deal with physical and emotional trauma in the wake of the vengeful gunman's deadly rampage; Meredith can´t confess her pregnancy and miscarriage yet. Derek makes a spontaneous decision to resign as chief and return to surgery. Christina and Owen get married. Lexie has a nervous breakdown and is admitted to psych. 

What we saw
It's time for the characters of 'Grey's Anatomy' to grow up and face the consequences of somebody else's actions in the wake of the season 6 finale shooting spree. Everybody is broken in their own way and trying to hold things together and return to the hospital and continue as if everything is normal. Oh and there's a wedding!

Review
I've already written myself in to a corner by basically saying that in a fight I am Team Addison not Team Meredith but fear not 'Grey's Anatomy' fans I am not here to slag this show off because I love it too, just not as much without Kate Walsh around.
The finale to season 6 was a shocker; there's no doubt about that and I look forward to seeing the further extended version when the DVD finally sees the light of day in the UK (we only got season 5 a couple of week ago). Due to that spree - a fact well discussed by Lexi Grey in this episode - there was no way that this show could come back light and bouncy. But it did come back fighting. Each character on show here is fighting to be normal in the wake of all the deaths and some are coping better than others.

The shooting itself did end up feeling somewhat like a plot mechanism to get rid of the Mercy West characters who had come to plague our long running favourites, luckily for us the only two of those who had been at all amiable to viewers are still alive and promoted to series regulars! You have to give respect to Shonda Rhimes for all out executing those cast members who aren't 100% committed to the show.

I feel I have to label this episode as a further return to form for 'Grey's' after the disappointing lack of Meredith last season due to Ellen Pompeo's pregnancy. I'm not going to fault her for having a family but the show didn't cope well with the lack of its lead and is doing its very best to make up for it now and as usual it is her exchanges with Cristina (Sandra Oh) which provide some of the best on-screen chemistry.
The flashbacks to the wake of the shootings give us an insight in to just how broken these characters were during the off season and help to add weight to the choices each of them are currently making, otherwise this episode would have felt like little more than a plot device to add further conflict.

As I have previously said, show runner Shonda Rhimes is not one to shy away from consequences although many of her characters are and here we are starting to see them mature and realise that due to the world they inhabit they can't hide what ails them. If there is to be a theme to this season at the moment I would call it 'growing up' and it's about time too!

At some point this show is going to end and the writers are clearly realising that before that happens there needs to be a degree of character development to move beyond the interns we first met during season 1. That is development that doesn't end in the departure of a character, with only Meredith, Cristina and Alex Karev remaining the show is going to rely much more on those characters who have been woven in to the ensemble more recently.
As with sister show 'Private Practice' this is a very strong ensemble cast here and each is doing their best here to portray characters who are hurt and scared but trying their best to return to normal and not one of them fails to pull this off successfully. 

All that remains is to see where the healing process takes out beloved Seattle Grace team from here.

Next week...
After weeks of concealing the fact she was pregnant and miscarried, Meredith at last tells Derek and is finally cleared to return to her surgical duties in the wake of the hospital shooting spree; Cristina experiences post-traumatic stress disorder in the midst of an operation; and Bailey refuses to let Alex operate until he agrees to have the bullet in his chest removed. 

Overall

Story    4.0
Character    4.0
Medicalness    3.0    
Overall    3.5

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