#anti krista vernoff

[zionistsinfilm]

When you buy or stream Grey's Anatomy, Shameless, Station 19, Charmed, Rebel, Stars, you're giving money to zionists. Krista Vernoff is a zionist.

[clarkegriffinblake]

#every SHOWRUINER ever

[deathbyathousandgreys]

You drew stars around my scars

But now I'm bleedin'

[ddh1973]

After hearing the unrealistic ending of tonight’s episode.  I wish April had died instead of the bullshit ending she got.  She left Matthew for Jackson.  After each one of my favorite ships on that show have been spit and stomped on, what that hack of EP did to Japril for an unpopular pairing, I’m officially done with this hateful show.

[crazyopinionatedwriterchick]

The End of my Grey’s Days

Joyless In Seattle...

This last season of Grey’s Anatomy has brought me no joy. Which is the saddest thing I’ve said all year considering since I started watching this show with my Mom every week it brought J-O-Y!!!! Oh Happy Day when Shonda came, When Shonda came and brought the greatest successor to ER  TV Medical Drama’s have ever seen. It was like a fireworks show every season. Magical and fantastical, filled with bright explosions of happiness and humor and moments of darkness and trepidation that had us wishing for the next great explosion of ebullience to go off. This past season has been like watching a succession of bottle rockets. Loud and Brash and promising a big boom but then it just whistles and pops into a moment of nothingness that leaves you sitting there asking yourself, is that it? They started on a okay note, good plot lines possible character development: (Jo’s story of abuse and facing her abuser , Meredith FINALLY moving on from Derek with a good guy, Owen and his Sister and Maybe a new spark with Teddy, Jackson and the new medical contest that was hopefully gonna bring him and April closer, April’s crisis of faith.....Then it went to shit. As is per usual of Greys Anatomy since Shonda started juggling shows. The plot lines became trite and eratic. Jo’s whole abuse storyline that could have been at least an entire season if not two of great TV was wrapped up in a neat and unbelievable bow in two episodes. Christina’s PTSD after the hospital shooting in S6 took half a season to resolve. That was one day of Trauma and Abuse. I expected suffering years of a much more intimate abuse and trauma on a character would take a lot longer than two episodes to resolve. That was Missed opportunity #1. Missed opportunity #2 Meredith and moving on from Derek. I’m sorry but if you have the balls to kill off  Derek Shepherd then have the balls to let Meredith move on from his death. They were headed in the right direction with Riggs, he was charming, he was kind, he had the makings to be good for Meredith. I liked him, I liked him for her, I liked them together and what did they go and do, the two dumbest storylines possible. Stuck him in a love triangle with Meredith and Maggie. The dumbest triangle I have ever seen and then they go and stick them in another one with  Riggs’s suddenly alive war hero wife. And all that was wrapped up in less than two seasons. Moving on, Now there hasn’t been character development for years on Owen. He basically only brought out to be the sex toy first for Christina and then Amelia. The one chance he had to have a juicy storyline with his sister anon wait.... again it was wrapped up before the winter finale. What was it one episode for them to work through years of his trauma and guilt and having left his sister. Seems to be the new trend on Greys. Wrap up well laid plotlines in less than one episode or forget that character exist entirely. Haven’t seen Arizona or April for what seems like forever......guess now we know why. That’s Grey’s Anatomy now I guess but the firing of Jessica and Sarah was the last straw for me. Not the fact that they were fired but the reason they were fired. They were fired because their characters weren’t serving the narrative. New Show Runner Kristen “I’m the Captain Now” Vernoff can’t right a narrative for a LGBTQ disabled amputee single mother and a Devout christian divorceé Mother of a Biracial child with PTSD, depression, and borderline OCD. I’m sorry but if you can’t write a narrative for them you have now business calling yourself a writer. Hang up your keyboard give the Captain’s chair to someone who actually deserves it. Don’t push you bulls**t no chemistry pairings (Arizona/deluca’s sister, delta/Bello, and above all Jackson/Maggie), contrived and trusted storylines down our throat. Stop exciting us with a good ideas and not following through!! Those pairings are a struggle to watch. Stop treating Maggie like a spare tire pairing her with whoever doesn’t have a partner. Give her a real storyline or at the very least a love interest that isn’t her stepbrother. That’s incest, I don't care what anyone says, I’ve said it before I’ll say it again the the only incest i support is the 15th century Spanish Siblings with a penchant for murder and political machinations. Also who tosses away the only supercouple left on their show (and don’t come at me with Jolex is a super couple, I’m talking about the Couple even casual watchers know and on Greys Anatomy that was MerDer, Sexie, and Japril.)  Give us back the good storylines, great nuanced characters and relationships.  If not then I have a feeling this show is going to heading to its final season very fast. I know that this is my final season if not my final episode of Greys Anatomy until a competent creative Adult is back at the Head Writers desk. Thank You Grey’s Anatomy, it’s been real, it’s been fun but lately it ain’t been real fun!!!

PS Kepzona FOREVAH!!!!!

PSS JAPRIL FOREVAH EVAH!!!!!!!!

[thedefinitionofendgame]

me and @greys-for-days watched Jolex's wedding Friday night and yeah, nothing makes sense after watching that. so in our minds he and Jo are raising Luna together and in their happy little bubble, Izzie & twins free 🥰

fuck KV for ruining Jolex. i'm rewatching 9.22 and when Alex tells Jo "you're safe, you're safe here" that was his way of telling her 'i love you' without telling her exactly. he made her feel safe and she was someone for him fight his demons with; he knew he was never alone.

so yeah, that's why his ending in 16.16 will never make sense. i will never get over it.

[inyourbackpocketisbutterflies]

Not only did they k*ll Dean for no reason now I gotta watch Vic grieve again after she she finally got fucking happy 😭😭😭

If Krista Vernoff is anti black ima need her to just say that and not take away my people

[calzona-ga]

She might change her mind; she certainly has before. But midway through an interview, Ellen Pompeo casually drops the bomb that after more than 360 episodes, the upcoming 17th season of “Grey’s Anatomy” may be its last.

“We don’t know when the show is really ending yet,” Pompeo says, answering a question that was not at all about when the show might end. “But the truth is, this year could be it.”

Pompeo has played Meredith Grey — the superstar surgeon around whom “Grey’s Anatomy” revolves — since its start. The show, created by Shonda Rhimes, premiered on ABC on March 27, 2005, and became an immediate, noisy hit. Since then, for a remarkably long time in Hollywood years, the drama has been among the most popular series on TV, even as the landscape of television has changed seismically. At its Season 2 ratings height, the program drew an average audience of 20 million viewers. And all these years later — in a TV universe now divided by more than 500 scripted shows —“Grey’s” ranks as the No. 1 drama among 18- to 34- year-olds and No. 2 among adults 18 to 49. In delayed, multiplatform viewing, Season 16 averaged 15 million viewers.

Strikingly, technology is such that teenagers who were born when the show premiered, and later binged “Grey’s” on Netflix, watch new episodes live with their parents. The series has spawned two successful spinoffs for ABC, “Private Practice” (which ran from 2007 to 2013) and “Station 19” (which enters its fourth season this fall). “Grey’s Anatomy” has been licensed in more than 200 territories across the world, translated into more than 60 languages, and catapulted the careers of music artists — from Ingrid Michaelson and Snow Patrol to Tegan and Sara and the Fray — whose songs have played during key emotional sequences.

In its explosive initial success, “Grey’s Anatomy” was an insurgent force in popular culture. The Season 1 cast featured three Black actors — Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr. and Isaiah Washington — as doctors in positions of power at the Seattle hospital where the show is set, and Sandra Oh played the ambitious intern Cristina Yang, who would become Meredith’s best friend. For the women characters, the “Grey’s” approach to sex was defiant and joyful, starting in the pilot with Meredith’s one-night stand with Derek (Patrick Dempsey), who turned out to be one of her bosses at the hospital.

Rhimes presented these images to the world like they were no big deal, when in fact, nothing like “Grey’s” had ever been seen on network television. Krista Vernoff has been the “Grey’s Anatomy” showrunner since Season 14, as anointed by Rhimes, and was the head writer for the first seven seasons. She remembers the moment she realized how radical “Grey’s” was — a medical show driven entirely by its characters instead of their surgeries — as she watched an episode early in Season 1. “My whole body was covered in chills,” Vernoff recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, we thought we were making a sweet little medical show — and we’re making a revolution.’”

Still, no one expected “Grey’s Anatomy” to become the longest-running primetime medical drama in TV history, outlasting “MASH” and “ER,” the previous record-holder. Since 2005, “Grey’s” has inspired countless women to become doctors, and along the way, its depiction of illness has even saved a few lives. The show has remained popular through three presidential administrations, the Great Recession, tectonic shifts in how people watch TV and two cultural reckonings — one feminist, one anti-racist — that demonstrate how ahead of its time “Grey’s Anatomy” has always been.

And they’re not done yet. When Season 17 premieres on Nov. 12, “Grey’s Anatomy” will tackle the subject of the coronavirus as experienced by the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial, all while filming under strict COVID-19 protocols. The season is dedicated to frontline workers. And Pompeo, a producer on “Grey’s” — whose Meredith has removed a live bomb from a patient’s body, was in a plane crash, was widowed after Derek died in a car accident, was beaten nearly to death by a patient and, in a separate incident, actually did die briefly after a ferry accident — is intent on making the show top itself once again.

“I’m constantly fighting for the show as a whole to be as good as it can be. As a producer, I feel like I have permission to be able to do that,” Pompeo says. “I mean, this is the last year of my contract right now. I don’t know that this is the last year? But it could very well could be.”

Pompeo has been refreshingly transparent about her fight to become the highest-paid female actor on television, having detailed a few years ago how she negotiated a paycheck for more than $20 million a year. She clearly knows what she’s doing with these frank pronouncements as well.

As Pompeo laughs over the phone from her car, she says in a near shout: “There’s your sound bite! There’s your clickbait! ABC’s on the phone!”

The “Grey’s Anatomy” team — led by Rhimes and executive producer Betsy Beers — created the first season in a vacuum, because the show did not have an airdate. The 2004-05 season was a comeback year for ABC because “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost,” both of which debuted that fall, became phenomena — not only ratings successes but also watercooler events.

But at “Grey’s,” Rhimes was getting noted to death by network president Steve McPherson. According to Vernoff, McPherson — who resigned in 2010 under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations — stonewalled with “pushback every step of the way,” as ABC’s then- head of drama, Suzanne Patmore Gibbs, fought for the show. Vernoff was close with Patmore Gibbs, who died in 2018, and recalls her talking about her clashes with McPherson.

“He just didn’t get it; he didn’t like it,” Vernoff continues. “Honestly, I’m going to say, I don’t think he liked the ambitious women having sex unapologetically.”

Wilson, when she was cast as Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s,” was a New York theater actor (“Caroline, or Change”) relatively new to series television. But she was well aware of the network’s issues. “We took a creative break around the Christmas holiday, which to me meant ‘Oh, we’re out of a job.’”

Pompeo was frustrated: “Once we finally got an airdate, two weeks before that airdate they wanted to change the title of the show to ‘Complications.’”

In an email to Variety, McPherson disputed these assertions, saying, “I made the original deal with Shonda. I developed ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ at the studio. I picked it up at ABC.” He praised Patmore Gibbs, and added, “As for defaming me again and again, I don’t know what to say other than it’s sad that anyone feels the need to spread lies about me.”

Yet there was so little faith in the show that the writers were asked to clear out their offices when they finished the season. But to Vernoff, who had clicked right away with Rhimes, the early episodes had “felt like a labor of love.”

And it was worth the battle. “We fought for the right for Meredith and Bailey to be whole human beings, with whole sex lives, and not a network TV idea of likable,” Vernoff says. “You might not have been likable, but now you’re iconic.”

As far as the medicine went, the cases were often ostentatious. “Every kind of crazy accident that had ever caused terrible harm to any human ever, that was our homework at night,” Vernoff says. It was up to Zoanne Clack, an emergency room doctor-turned-writer, to be a sounding board in the writers’ room. She began as the only doctor on staff during the first season, and is now an executive producer. “What was interesting was that the writers don’t have those boundaries because they don’t know the rules, so they would come up with all of these scenarios, and my immediate thought was like, ‘No way!’” Clack says. “Then I’d have to think about it and go, ‘But could it?’”

When the program finally premiered — on a Sunday night after “Desperate Housewives” — to massive ratings, it was a shock to the cast and crew, given that they had shot the first season under a cloud, Pompeo says, adding, “So the fact that the numbers were that huge the first time we aired was a big f–k-you to McPherson!”

With Season 2 now a given, everything changed, Vernoff says: “It was like a hurricane-force gale, and everyone was just trying to hold on.” They had made 13 episodes for Season 1, airing nine of them and holding the final four for Season 2 — Meredith finding out that Derek was actually married (to Addison, played by Kate Walsh) had felt like the perfect finale. But upon the writers’ return, Vernoff says, the feeling was “Holy s—. We have to make 22.”

The entire cast — mostly unknown actors like Katherine Heigl as the sunny Izzie Stevens, T.R. Knight as the chummy neurotic George O’Malley, and Justin Chambers as the troubled, secretly vulnerable Alex Karev — had become famous overnight. For Wilson, whose Bailey was the stern teacher the interns called “the Nazi,” it was a new experience. “Folks were scared to talk to me, like in the store or in the Target — people would just kind of leave me alone,” she says. “It was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

According to Vernoff, “Paparazzi were following the cast to work — it was wild.”

The mid- to late-2000s were the height of glossy gossip magazines such as Us Weekly (and its copycats), as well as the inception of TMZ and Perez Hilton as celebrity-hounding, news-breaking forces that fueled (and soiled) the fame-industrial complex. The cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” was firmly in the sights of these new, often toxic forces in media.

Pompeo says the cast was so talented that it “was all worth it” — but yes, the transition to stardom was hard for the group: “At the time, it was just a real combination of exhaustion and stress and drama. Actors competing with each other — and envious.”

Heigl, Knight and Isaiah Washington all went through press cycles that made the show seem scandal-prone. To rehash it all now seems pointless; you can look it up. Washington was fired in June 2007. Knight and Heigl asked to be written out of the show preemptively, in Seasons 5 and 6, respectively.

Vernoff and the other writers were watching the internal messes unfold. They had to deal with how the fallout affected the show’s plot, as when Washington was fired just as Burke, his character, was about to marry Cristina. “When word comes down that an actor is leaving the show, and what you’ve got scripted is a wedding …” Vernoff trails off, laughing.

“There was a lot of drama on-screen and drama off-screen, and young people navigating intense stardom for the first time in their lives,” she continues. “I think that a lot of those actors, if they could go back in time and talk to their younger selves, it would be a different thing. Everybody’s grown and changed and evolved — but it was an intense time.”

Pompeo doesn’t want to talk about what happened with individual actors from the show, because when she has in the past, “it doesn’t get received in the way in which I intend it to be.” But she does make a point about the way television is produced. “Nobody should be working 16 hours a day, 10 months a year — nobody,” she says. “And it’s just causing people to be exhausted, pissed, sad, depressed. It’s a really, really unhealthy model. And I hope post-COVID nobody ever goes back to 24 or 22 episodes a season.

“It’s why people get sick. It’s why people have breakdowns. It’s why actors fight! You want to get rid of a lot of bad behavior? Let people go home and sleep.”

Debbie Allen would eventually be Pompeo’s savior in that regard, but that was years away. Allen — an actor and a dancer — began her directing career when she was on the 1980s TV series “Fame” as a “natural progression” because, she says, “I was in charge of the musical numbers, and so many directors didn’t really know how to shoot them.” She went on to be a prolific director and producer, most notably overhauling NBC’s “A Different World” after a tumultuous first season. As a fan of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Allen wanted to work on the show, and in Season 6, she was hired to direct. To prepare for it, Allen shadowed Wilson, who had been tapped to direct by executive producer-director Rob Corn. (“He came to me and said, ‘You should direct,’” says Wilson, who has now helmed 21 episodes. “And I said, ‘OK.’ Because I didn’t know what else to say.”)

Directing that sixth-season episode led to Allen’s fruitful relationship with “Grey’s.” In Season 8, Rhimes wrote Allen into the show to play Catherine, a star surgeon, a love interest for Richard Webber (Pickens) and the mother of Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams). Ahead of Season 12 in 2015, Allen became the show’s EP/director. Her duties included hiring all of the directors, weighing in on scripts and casting, and, as Allen puts it, “minding that people feel good about themselves.” Several years before the revived #MeToo movement would lead to calls for systemic changes behind the camera in Hollywood, Allen set a goal of hiring 50% women directors. She also increased the number of Black men who directed “Grey’s” during her first season as executive producer, among them Denzel Washington. (When she sold him on it, she recounts, he said to her, “I’m going to say yes, Debbie Allen.”)

Pompeo and Allen are close. Allen began her new role the year after Dempsey left, “at a time when we were really broken,” Pompeo says. “And so much of our problems were perpetuated by bad male management. Debbie came in at a time when we really, really needed a breath of fresh air, and some new positive energy.”

Pompeo continues with a laugh: “Debbie really brought in a spirit to the show that we had never seen — we had never seen optimism! We had never seen celebration. We had never seen joy!”

According to Pompeo, Allen began advocating for her to have more humane hours — Fridays off (Pompeo: “And I was like, ‘What? What? Fridays off?’”) — and for the show to shoot 12-hour days maximum, and ideally no more than 10 hours (Pompeo: “And I was like, I love this woman.”).

Allen speaks affectionately about her bond with Pompeo. “Coming out of Boston, she’s so earthy and real in a way that you might not know,” Allen says. “There’s a sisterhood between us — I guess you would say it’s almost a Blackness that exists between us. And she’s part of our tribe.”

Allen has been a key member of the “Grey’s Anatomy” brain trust since Season 12, and two seasons later, Vernoff returned to run the show. She’d left at the end of Season 7, consulted on “Private Practice” for a few years, and then went to Showtime’s “Shameless” for five seasons. As her contract was set to expire, Rhimes asked Vernoff to lunch, and told her she wanted her to take over. “It felt like she was saying, ‘Hey, our kid needs you,’” Vernoff says.

Before accepting the offer, Vernoff had to catch up on the show. She had always written “Grey’s” as a romantic comedy, and what she saw on-screen during her binge was dark as hell — especially after Derek’s death. “If this show that you are currently making is the show that you want ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ to be,” she recalls telling Rhimes, “I am, in fact, not the right writer for it.” But Rhimes was insistent, saying it was time for a change after the mourning period for Derek.

Vanessa Delgado, who started as a production intern during the seventh season and has worked her way up to being lead editor and co-producer, says the show’s trajectory shifted when Vernoff came back — it was a return to the original, saucier tone of “Grey’s.” “We changed the music completely,” Delgado says. “The dialogue felt lighter and more fun, and wewere having fun again.”

That lightness will be difficult to maintain this year, of course, when, as Allen puts it, “COVID is No. 1 on the call sheet right now.”

Vernoff at first wondered whether “Grey’s” should ignore the coronavirus, thinking the audience comes to the show “for relief.” But the doctors in the writers’ room convinced her this wasn’t the time for escapism, saying to her, “This is the biggest medical story of our lifetime, and it is changing medicine permanently.”

When they’ve had doctors and nurses come speak with them this season, Vernoff says, “they were different human beings than the people we’ve been talking to every year. And I want to honor that, tonally. I just want to inspire people to take care of each other.”

Pompeo, who is not shy about offering criticism, sounds positively enthusiastic: “I’ll say the pilot episode to this season — girl, hold on.

“What nobody thinks we can continue to do, we have done. Hold on. That’s all we’re going to say about that!”

Pompeo has a few more months before she decides whether she wants to continue — and as Rhimes and ABC have made clear in recent years, the show will likely end when she leaves. “I don’t take the decision lightly,” Pompeo says. “We employ a lot of people, and we have a huge platform. And I’m very grateful for it.”

“You know, I’m just weighing out creatively what can we do,” she says. “I’m really, really, really excited about this season. It’s probably going to be one of our best seasons ever. And I know that sounds nuts to say, but it’s really true.”

Vernoff doesn’t worry about the creative well drying up. “We’ve blown past so many potential endings to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ that I always assume it can go on forever,” she says.

And Wilson knows how important “Grey’s” is to its audience, in that the characters have essentially become people who “live in their house.” As one of only three actors who’ve been on “Grey’s” since the beginning — the other is James Pickens Jr. — Wilson is in it until the end: “In my mind, Bailey is there until the doors close, until the hospital burns down, until the last thing happens on ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ That is her entire arc.”

Whenever the show does conclude, part of its legacy will be about the talent it launched into the world, beginning with Rhimes, who will soon release her first shows for Netflix, after her company, Shondaland, made a lucrative deal with the streamer in 2017.

But it will also be about the characters of “Grey’s Anatomy”— mostly women and people of color — who are trying to make the world a better place as they find friendship, love and community.

“The show, at its core, brings people together,” Pompeo says. “And the fact that people can come together and watch the show, and think about things they may not have ordinarily thought about, or see things normalized and humanized in a way that a lot of people really need to see — it helps you become a better human being. If this show has helped anybody become a better human being, then that’s the legacy I’d love to sit with.”

[ezelimsinx]

It still feels so surreal...

It’s been over two months and I still feel so sad, angry, and defeated thinking about Alex’s goodbye episode. Of course it hurts thinking about how dirty the writers did Jolex, but what hurts even more is that they ended Alex’s 16-season long journey on the show by making him look like a piece of shit. If I look at the man who wrote those letters, I don’t see a character I loved for years "disappointing his wife”, like Krista Vernoff described it in her interviews. I see a man who nauseates me so much with his actions that I can’t even respect him enough anymore to be happy that he’s alive and happy. Because I can’t excuse anything he did with the existence of these kids, like the writers on the show did.

The Alex Karev I loved would’ve never worried Jo for weeks and lied to her, would have never intentionally hurt her the way he did, especially not after he saw how much she struggled mentally only weeks before he left. But it’s just not me who feels that way about him. The people closest to him on the show all looked dumbfounded when they read their letters. People who worked with him for years said he would never cheat on Jo. Not a single person thought he’d ever do what he ended up doing. The writers even pointed that out in the episodes leading to his goodbye. Something that baffles me to this day; because why try to make the ending you chose for this character look even more unrealistic by everyone close to Alex swearing he would never hurt Jo?

I genuinely thought he’d die and prepared myself to mourn him for weeks, because that’s how much he meant to me. Him getting a tribute episode sounded to me like he’d be honored by the writers and be remembered as the terrific person he had become over the years. I still had some hope though that they’d solve his exit in a way where killing him off wouldn’t be necessary, but would explain his absence in a realistic and noble way, making us yearn for the day he might return to the show. Hence the title “Leave a light on”. I genuinely thought I’d be able to expect that level of creativity from professional writers.

Instead, they left me with nothing but disdain for a fictional character I felt so proud to have rooted for for years. Everybody can mess up and do something wrong, especially Alex who’s always been a flawed and complex character. Which was one of the reasons I loved him so much. But you can’t build so much of a character’s journey on his abandonment issues stemming from his ex wife ghosting and leaving him, only for him to do the exact same thing to a woman who loved him with her whole heart and proved to him that he deserves to be loved. I don’t buy Alex doing that, and it seems the majority of the viewers didn’t either.

However, it still makes me sad that now a lot of people will remember Alex Karev as the man who left his wife for someone else with a letter. That either they try to justify his actions by twisting the meaning of old scenes where he mentioned Izzie because they’re thrilled he’s back together with her, or are so angry with him that they’ll never forgive him.

I would fall into the latter category, if everything regarding his exit wasn’t so unrealistic and ridiculous. It blows my mind that Krista Vernoff and her writers are actually proud of their writing and expect us all to be equally happy with an episode that made no freaking sense when you rewatch any of the Jolex or Alex scenes in season 16. It’s downright ridiculous that we’re expected to believe that after one phone call he ran back to his ex - who hurt him terribly - when there was no buildup in his scenes prior to that moment hinting at him ever doing such a thing.

Am I saying there’s no way he would have ever left Jo and got back together with Izzie? No. Because life’s unexpected and feelings can change. However, doing an Izzex endgame should have required establishing a strong  buildup between Alex and Izzie, as well as major conflict between him and Jo. Showing a man who fought for his love and relationship with Jo for years, and was beyond happy with her to the point where one of the last things he did on the show was marrying her again, leave her for his ex-wife so easily in the most dishonest and dishonorable way possible is nothing but character assassination. There’s just no other way I can explain what the writers did to Alex. Finding out you have kids doesn’t mean you have to throw your entire life full of people who care about you away to be a father to them. And it certainly doesn’t mean you have to betray your wife, whom you only remarried weeks ago. A person, who just like you, has abandonment and trust issues, and sees you as her only family.

When I look at the man who wrote those letters, I feel nothing but disgust. But he’s so unlike the man I’ve watched evolve for 15 years that there’s no possible way for me to truly associate him with Alex Karev. Which is the reason I still love him and will always do. He’s my favorite male TV character and it pains me that I have to ignore his official ending, knowing that others won’t be able to do the same, and that this is how he’ll be remembered by millions of people now.

And that’s what’s so upsetting about his goodbye. Not that one ship got ruined and another rose after 10 years. Ships shouldn’t be a priority in this. It’s the fact that we deserved to get a tribute episode filling us with pride for the man Alex had become, as well as with sadness for losing him. Not an ending that left people angry and disgusted. 

Sadly, it sounds like Krista Vernoff is too proud of that episode to ever undo that atrocious ending she deemed fitting for him. And the worst thing is that she’s not even listening to the reasons people give her for disliking this ending for Alex. Maybe then she’d actually realize that this is about far more than ship wars. I wouldn’t have loved for Alex to end up with Izzie, because I preferred him with Jo. But I could have accepted and respected it, if it had been done realistically. In a way that rang true to the person Alex had become after Izzie left, not completely disregarding the growth he experienced in the last 10 years without her.

1x01 - 16x06 Alex Karev, you deserve everything good in the world and I will always love you with all my heart. If there was ever a fictional character who has touched me so much with his story, it was you and your journey to becoming the kind of man nearly all viewers adored. For years you suffered at the hands of writers who never appreciated you enough or used the potential you had. In the end you fell victim to the writing of a narcissistic woman with a huge ego, who put her own feelings before proper characterization when writing you out, thus completely destroying an original character she didn’t even create. You should’ve been the priority in your own tribute episode, and yet you weren’t. Even your last episode unfortunately showcased how little the writers cared about you, or else they wouldn’t have sent you off as everything you were not, just so they could fullfil their own wishes of an endgame that made no sense 10 years later.

I will always hold out hope that one day you’ll be back, explaining that the letters were fake and you had a good reason to be gone for years. Maybe one day I’ll get an ending for you which I don’t have to block out, so I don’t feel sick thinking about it. Maybe one day the writers will do you justice. 

[clarkegriffinblake]

#same energy

[calzona-ga]

New co-showrunner Krista Vernoff, who returned to the Shondaland drama after working as a writer for its first seven seasons, talks with THR about the ups and downs of the two-hour opener.

ABC's Grey's Anatomy returned for its 14th season Thursday, delivering a fast-paced and jam-packed two-hour premiere that featured a few key returns (on-screen and off), several nods to its past and one massive bombshell.

Kim Raver's Teddy returned to support old friend/crush Owen (Kevin McKidd) and his former POW sister Megan (Abigail Spencer), with the latter setting up a new love triangle that involved Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Nathan (Martin Henderson).

Owen planted a long-awaitd kiss on Teddy, who with his mother and sister, agreed that his wife Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) was just not his person. Head of neuro Amelia, meanwhile, delivered the premiere's biggest stunner — as she learned in the closing moments that she had a brain tumor.

April (Sarah Drew) realized it's time to move out of ex-husband/baby daddy Jackson's (Jesse Williams) place — despite her feelings for him — while he pursued Maggie (Kelly McCreary).

Jo (Camilla Luddington) and Alex (Justin Chambers) patched things up with her estranged and violent husband Paul (Matthew Morrison) still looming if the couple really want to get married.

Ben (Jason George) admitted to feeling a "rush" when he helped save Stephanie (Jerrika Hinton) in the season 13 finale as the series set the stage for the character to segue over to the firefighter spinoff.

After Eliza (Marika Dominczyk) ghosted her, Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) got her groove back on (again) — with Andrew's (Giacomo Gianniotti) Italian sister Carina (Stefania Spampinato), whose study about the female orgasm helped reveal Amelia's tumor.

Peppered in among all the twists and turns were several nods to the past — including multiple references to Mer's late mom Ellis (Kate Burton), nod to George (T.R. Knight), Derek (Patrick Dempsey), Callie (Sara Ramirez) and a photo of Cristina (Sandra Oh) in a medical journal. The blasts from the past — and return to its classic humor — came from Krista Vernoff (Shameless), who returned to the ABC Shondaland medical drama as the co-showrunner after helping to launch Grey's as part of its core writing staff for its first seven seasons.

Below, Vernoff opens up about season 14's eventful start and where ABC's top drama goes next.

The first two hours are really eventful. How much of that is setting the new pace of Grey's vs. setting the stage for the season to come? Setting the stage.

There were a lot of nods to the past — we see Cristina's photo and there's a reference to George. Why was it important to acknowledge the past? I'm not sure that it was important so much as it felt natural to me. I think it's a little bit like, "I'm back so they are, too!"  Also, we are doing the 300th episode this year. I think I came into the season planning to acknowledge where it all started.

Webber points out a few times how similar Meredith is to Ellis. Is that part of bringing the show back to its origins or part of looking forward to a potential Alzheimer's story? It's neither. It just felt really organic for a man who grew up with the mother of the woman he is now working with to acknowledge similarities and even be a little haunted by them. Also, Meredith has a surgical birthright that we are leaning into this season. This is the season of Meredith being something of a medical superhero — like Ellis was.  

There's a lot of humor in the first two episodes — all that was missing was a "seriously?!"Is bringing that humor back part of a larger effort to bring the show back to its roots? It's not about the roots so much as where my heart lives right now.  I'm not interested in writing darkness. I feel like the world has gone dark enough. I feel like we who are part of the resistance right now need some relief in our entertainment. I feel like it's part of my personal activism to help people sit down and laugh at night so they can get back up in the morning and fight the good fight.  

There's a parallel between Megan returning home and creating the triangle with Nathan and Meredith to when Addision returned and created the same for Derek and Meredith. Will you be exploring that more? That's interesting, and it honestly hadn't even occurred to me! No, I don't want to give away too much — but I am writing this story very differently.

Is there a potential for Abigail Spencer and Kim Raver to stick around longer — maybe series regular status — this season? If I had the budget for it I would bring them both back forever, immediately. They are incredible talents and it's a joy to write for them and to work with them.  

Amelia has a brain tumor. Talk about the decision to go that route — does that explain her behavior last season too? What's the larger story you're looking at with her? When I caught up on the show, I thought Amelia had been behaving really oddly. It got my wheels turning and this is where they landed!

Has Owen given up on his marriage to Amelia when he kisses Teddy? I believe that he has. Which is why when he learns that a brain tumor may be the answer for how Amelia's been treating him — it will be really complicated.  

How might Meredith respond to Amelia's tumor? Is there a place where she goes dark and twisty again? No, Meredith has already survived too much to return to dark and twisty. I really believe that. I believe that as people survive the unimaginable they tend to get lighter because they know now that they can survive anything — unless they go completely the opposite direction, which Meredith, happily has not!

Jo and Alex are moving forward — and Paul is coming back. Where do they go from here and what will that look like? I can't answer that without giving away too much! But I will say — for all my talk of light and hope and joy — that it wouldn't be Grey's Anatomy if there were not some dark and twisty turns here and there.  

Ben felt a "rush" from saving Stephanie. How will he lean into that and what does that mean for Bailey? Well, since it's been announced that Jason George is going to the firefighting show I think everyone can anticipate how he's leaning into that! And as you can imagine, that is an extremely complicated thing for Bailey to process. It makes for great drama and Chandra Wilson is so incredible I'm really enjoying writing it.

April is moving out of Jackson's apartment as he has interest in Maggie. Will he fight for her? April is moving out of Jackson's apartment because it is causing her pain to continue living with the man she divorced. When she thought she recognized feelings between Jackson and Maggie, she realized that living with a man you still love but are divorced from is maybe not the smartest thing to do. I feel like it's a really beautiful, grown-up move from April. I also think that there were not necessarily feelings between Maggie and Jackson last season! I think her jealousy led her to that conclusion but when she said it, she opened a kind of Pandora's box. I think it will be a lot of fun to see how it all plays out.  

Arizona and Carina are really funny together with Andrew. How will this relationship be different for Arizona? This is a season of fun! And Carina brings so much fun! Because I am anti-spoiler, that's all I'm going to give you on that!