Grey's Anatomy: If/Then

This episode played out a potential present day if Ellis Grey had never gotten Alzheimer's and died. It's set up as Meredith's actual dream that she dreams. Like we see her thinking, "What if?" and falling asleep. So presumably no logic applies. Except it's set up as x = normal only with Ellis Grey, so what's the point of that? Many sources of irritation right there.

The show sets up a happy, perky Meredith who wears pink and gets along with (and LIVES with) her mom and her dad, who is Chief Webber in this scenario. She's meek and earnest and very much in her mom's shadow. See, I think that could have made an amazing episode right there, to see how that Meredith would deal with a given situation, say with Lexie reappearing as a junkie.

But the show immediately breaks that premise. Ellis is alive and well and bossing everyone around, so...Derek and Addison never broke up? Why? Callie chose a completely different specialty? Why? Callie and Owen somehow met years earlier than they otherwise would have and had three kids together? None of this makes any sense. Mark doesn't follow Addison to Seattle because Ellis is there? Addison someone follows Derek immediately so that he doesn't meet Meredith? Or I suppose she's just not in the bar because she's a pink-wearing good girl because of her overbearing mother?

Again, none of this makes sense. If you set this up as consequences of the non-Alzheimerization of Ellis Grey, then you have to stick to actual consequences, not just make up random stuff and play off how different it is from our world.

It does point out how interesting and different things actually would have been for Meredith, however. But you have to leave her the same core personality. People are who they are, in reaction to and including stimuli, but Ellis was Ellis from day one and formed Meredith from the beginning, not just after the onset of Alzheimer's.

We sort of reach the same conclusion in a way, because the show bends over backwards to undo all the changes it has imagined into being and pushes everyone back to the way they are in our version of things. It was infuriating to watch, though. Fictional characters don't have destinies or lives that exist free of how you've been imagining them, show. Changing one element like that would change a lot, yes, and that would be very interesting to see if it were actually done honestly, but these people don't have destinies. They are as you write them. It's idiotic to suggest otherwise. 

This episode really makes me realize how true to themselves people really are. Honestly, they are. People change over time, but towards themselves, becoming more like themselves. Unless you're talking about traumatic brain injury or something.

So to imagine that Meredith or Bailey or Lexie or Cristina would be such very different people--all of them WORSE than in our world, naturally--makes absolutely no sense.

But the very worst thing about this episode is something that has bothered me since the beginning, and that's the demonization of the strong and powerful woman. It's completely common in every kind of literature, obviously. But this was a gratuitous episode full of it. AND it ended with the awesome powerful woman breaking down and crying, once she'd gone and ruined everyone's lives that day. That's just sickening from a show that pretends to be feminist.

How about this? Ellis Grey is strong and fully alert and doesn't have Alzheimer's, so she's a fantastic role model for her daughter and Bailey and Cristina and Lexie, all of whom want to grow up and be her and are inspired to great new heights of achievement. Women are not beaten down by other strong women. They admire them. And strong women don't leave a trail of battered beat-up weaklings in their paths. Men do that to women, not women. Is there really even one example out there of a strong mother who got where she was by beating up on and abusing all the women around her? Women don't tend to get ahead by behaving like that, of course, because of the double standard. (Again, men do.) And the last lousy thing it does is blame everything on the mother, once again.

This episode made me ill all kinds of ways, from the complete failure to stick to any kind of logic, to the demonization of Ellis Grey once again. She was the cause of all of Meredith's problems when she had Alzheimer's, so now that she doesn't, she's still the cause of all of Meredith's problems? How about Meredith is responsible for her own damn problems? Ever think of that?

Also, I'd like to see some kind of resolution between the two giant powerful founding beliefs of this show, namely: 1) Meredith Grey is utterly effed up every kind of way, and 2) Meredith Grey is the most awesome at what she does and everyone loves her. I don't think those two things happen together very often. Surely someone that screwed up would also screw up in her professional life--and I don't mean the way she wrecks opportunities in the show. I mean she would kill people because she'd be hung over or had no sleep or forgot things because she was in some major crisis. I realize we have this fictional contradiction buzz that we like so much, where two things that can't coexist in one person somehow do, but it doesn't actually make any sense in this character. If she's doing that great in her professional and personal life, then where's the problem?

Come on, show. George's mom is all kinds of sweet and awesome, even accepting Callie's wife and baby, but Ellis is a demon from hell no matter what you have her do. I refuse to believe what you're selling here. Meredith can't be a strong, awesome surgeon if she's nice and friendly and wears pink and is happy? She has to drink tequila and be mean and sleep with married guys she meets in bars, or she won't be an amazing surgeon? You don't really think that, do you? Because that sure seems like what you're saying.

I don't think this episode was thought out well at all. I think what the show's been saying all along is that your drive and ambition and strength of character determine what happens to you, not who or what your mom is, not your past or your relationships or what happens to you. They sort of tried to say that by having everyone swerve back to the regular show's way of things by the end, but it would have worked much better to have our beloved characters actually overcome those things and be themselves despite whatever else is going on. Bailey's ultimate Baileyness isn't made or broken by the presence or absence of someone else, no matter how big a bully.

That's ultimately pretty satisfying as a conclusion, so I wish they'd said that instead.

A Bailey who believes that we all make our own destiny is not going to be knocked off her game by someone else. Even if you can't *make* your own destiny--if it's destiny, then it's written in stone, y'all. Sheesh.