After last season and Gizzy-Gate, I had all but given up on Grey’s Anatomy. This season, though, it pulled me back in. So despite my better judgment, I was totally sucked in and looking forward to this season’s finale. I’ve got to say: I wasn’t disappointed.
I’ve long hated the make-up break-up cycle between Meredith and Derek, so it was nice to see them committing themselves to each other. I enjoyed the new turns the Christina/Owen relationship took, and even Izzie’s brain tumor. It was nice to see George actually somewhat back in the story with his big decision. I liked just about everything about the finale, but I couldn’t help but thinking, as I watched it, that it seemed kind of … familiar.
It started off slowly, and I’m sure, entirely coincidentally. When everybody around her was arguing about her treatment, Izzie went to her happy place, where she was sitting on the beach with Denny. It’s a pretty common device, but didn’t we just see it on House? Remember when Mos Def guest-starred as the patient with Locked-In Syndrome, and he and House spent a lot of the episode frolicking on the beach?
Granted, neither one of them is in a bikini, and everyone likes the beach, but seeing two patients hallucinate/daydream about being on the beach instead of confined to a hospital bed so close together is a little weird. However, Izzie’s beach vacation didn’t come close to the Déjà vu I experienced when watching the big twist at the end of the episode.
Let me first preface this by saying I loved the way the Grey‘s writers set this up. There was so much activity going on in the hospital that, as a viewer, I didn’t even notice that we hadn’t seen George since he told Bailey about his decision. Quite frankly, since T.R. Knight wasn’t exactly front-and-center throughout most of this season, it didn’t seem significant that he wasn’t around.
The one thing that did strike me as a little odd was how Alex referred to him as 007, since that’s not a nickname anyone has used regarding him for a while. I just brushed it off, though, thinking that it was a snide remark about George cracking under pressure if he were to go to Iraq. So when we finally find out that O’Malley was the John Doe who got dragged by a bus, I was shocked. Then I was confused, because hadn’t ER already done this?
While the beach thing was probably entirely coincidental, this couldn’t have been. My question is, was it an homage, or a rip-off? At first, I thought it was a blatant rip-off, but it had been a decade or so since I had seen that episode of ER, so upon re-watching it, I’m leaning more toward homage.
After all, the ER staff found out right away that their faceless John Doe was Dr. Gant, whereas it took the entire episode to find out it was George. Dr. Gant died, while George, well, at the very least, survived for a while. Dr. Gant committed suicide, while George saved a young woman’s life.
In all, while it was a powerful ending for Grey‘s, I can’t help but think it would have been more powerful had another wildly popular hospital drama not done almost the exact same twist. What do you think? Does the fact that ER did this before diminish Grey‘s ending, or does George’s storyline stand on its own?
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on May 15, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
Some are saying they ripped off thirtysomething: https://scribe.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/%E2%80%9Cgrey%E2%80%99s-anatomy%E2%80%9D-steals-script-%E2%80%9Cthirtysomething%E2%80%9D
Since the only show I really watch is Grey’s the entire last 2 shows [4 ME] WAS NOT Deja vu…LOVED THEM !!!!!
It’s so funny you wrote this– I just finished watching the finale and was disappointed since I thought there was no originality because of two other situations, both of which took place already on Grey’s. The first, when Izzy was deciding whether or not to have the surgery which could leave her without memories, was taken straight from an early episode where a man and his fiancee/wife were in the same situation, and they decided not to have the surgery, since they would rather have several months together with the man as he was, as opposed to a lifetime together with him without his memories, since as a person, he exists as a compilation of his memories (there was something about photography and omelettes). At the time, the interns thought the patient and his wife were being foolish. The next situation was when Izzy’s short term memory was gone, exactly the same way it was when one of the southern women who was in a limo accident lost her husband and repeatedly needing reminding. I felt like the writers had entirely lost their originality since they were recycling their own ideas, and I hand’t even thought of the ER connections!
thats true… copy of ER – I love both shows but I have to admit…. ER was there first and I’m sure they took some ideas from them. When I saw the bus thing I thought of Dr Gant and even Dr Gallant (going to war etc) – plus the ‘doctor sick and maybe dying’ we already saw with Dr Green – all ER recycled material. Nice though…
I never watched ER so 4 me the ending of Grey’s was a shocker