Grey's Anatomy: A life less ordinary

Grrrr... God or Shonda or somebody doesn't want me to post my thoughts on last night's "Grey's Anatomy." First I accidentally hit the "publish" instead of "save as draft" button as I'm rushing out the door to drive my daughter to pre-school, then I actually write a lengthy post and Blogger eats it. Writing and saving this version off-line. The series of tubes will not beat me, no sir. Spoilers ho...

I want to take the hype factor out of this discussion, even though I was complaining about Shonda's blog last week. Compared to what the ABC promo department pulled with "Lost" the other night, Shonda's discussion of this three-parter was mild, plus it was targeted at a really tiny and obsessed portion of her audience.

As for the episode itself, I think it suffered a lot for the sins of past shows, which have robbed my affection for a lot of these characters. There were a whole bunch of scenes last night, like Cristina extolling the virtues of 99-cent shopping or Denny marveling at McDreamy's mcawesomeness, that made me think, "Gosh, if I still liked Cristina/Derek, I might be moved right about now." At the moment, though, I only like a handful of characters, notably Addison (who's escaping to her own spin-off), Karev and the Chief. Not coincidentally, the only scenes that really worked for me involved either Alex and his John Doe patient or Weber saying goodbye to Ellis. I also have some residual goodwill for Denny, so I was touched by the last scene, even if Izzy has become such a spectacularly loathsome person. When another person mocks you for having loved ones who died and still comes off as the sympathetic figure in an argument, it's time to go.

One area where Shonda fell down, independent of what's happened in the past, was Ellis' goodbye to Meredith in the ghost hospital. A lot of people predicted exactly this scenario last week, but the execution of it was as flat as everything else in this three-parter. I think it would have had far more impact without any set-up at all. No scenes of Ellis coding in the real world, no glimpse of her wandering the ghost halls before her encounter with Meredith; just have Meredith running back to life, having already made her decision on that front, and being stopped for a moment by the sight of her mom walking the other way. They could still have the identical conversation, but the flow would have been better and the stakes higher, even for those of us who suspected it was coming.

You've already started making your opinions known, so keep it coming.