FEATURE | Dissecting the Heart of Art
By Keith Nacion
The COVID-19 pandemic may have officially ended, but old habits indeed die hard as procrastination can’t help but flourish even between steep mountains of academic requirements. There is the matter of accidentally sleeping on someone else’s bunk, ordering another batch of fast food from outside campus, and bingeing comfort shows as long as one’s weariness would allow them to.
“Pick me. Choose me. Love me.” Such a line has undoubtedly reverberated through the farthest corners of the Internet, Twitter and Tiktok most especially, to express an unquenchable desire for anything under the sun really: a recent Shopee purchase, an irresistible fictional crush, or perhaps a much-needed boost in their Math grades. Little do most netizens know where this proclamation of great romance comes from. Well, this moment in television history was made iconic by none other than Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, in the multi-award-winning hit series “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Spanning 19 heart-rending seasons with an upcoming 20th already granted renewal just this year, the show has already produced and released over 400 45-minute episodes following Meredith, along with four other surgical interns, as they maneuver through the daily chaos of being aspiring physicians guided by accomplished figures like their residents, fellows, and attendings at Seattle Grace Hospital.
Being the longest-running primetime medical drama on American TV, “Grey’s Anatomy” has had a myriad of opportunities to showcase the complexity, the layer upon layer of subtexts, the endless stream of nuances of being a human in the 21st century . Every episode never misses to emphasize the many ways one can heal and be healed beyond the field of medicine, much like how the characters never fall short in depicting morally gray individuals who traverse an esteemed field with a fair share of trials and tribulations. It is in these portrayals that hit close to home that one can grow from being a casual enjoyer to a die-hard fan who would deprive themself of sleep just to find out who dies and who lives on to experience more love and loss and renewal.
Beware your medical aspirations however! For you would not be able. to educate yourself on cells, tissues, organs, and the simultaneous marvels of the human body by simply bingeing season after anxiety-inducing season. While scientific jargon are indeed featured heavily throughout any episode, hearing “push one of epi” and “get the crash cart, stat” will in no way teach you how to be a fine surgeon who can perform emergency open heart procedures in a malfunctioning elevator like the ever-compassionate George O’Malley. One need not be an aspiring med student to fully immerse themself in the experience of watching people, real or make-believe, grow into who they are from making mistakes and righting those wrongs in the company of equally flawed individuals.
Much of the drama actually revolves around short-lived hookups and inadvertent relationships. Regardless, the beauty of it all is manifested in the breadth, in the remarkable heights and depths of human emotions — from joy to grief to wonder to despair, as well as in every passing smile and fleeting gaze of the ensemble cast, in adherence to the script or not. There is not only the heightening of sensation often only present in superhero blockbusters, but also the intrigue in how the clashing personalities ultimately become complementaries. that author vibrant tales of empathizing with vanity and vulnerabiity. The doctors’ personal and professional lives blur together as storms of lies, malpractice, and unprecedented deaths threaten to tear down the walls of the hospital and prevent them from being in significant aid to the victims of mortality’s many faces: blunt force trauma, recurrent cancer, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and several other cases that are yet to have official names. Mild or severe, benign or malignant, genetic or circumstantial.
Let it be the so-called “dark and twisted” Meredith or the supposedly heartless and overachieving Cristina Yang — or any of their love interests for that matter — the show also highlights how people in places of service such as theirs can muster all effort and resources at their immediate disposal to combat timely and relevant social issues like racism, classism, misogyny, homophobia, and ableism, to name a few. “Grey’s Anatomy” does indeed “show, don’t tell” by pitting their characters against their own principles. Such was a pivotal point in April Kepner’s story, wherein her encounter with several flatlines in just one day put her faith in God to the test. The same goes for Jackson Avery, her husband, who had an all-around transition from atheism to potential acknowledgement of some transcendence after a near-death experience at a pedestrian crossing.
Fiction may be leagues ahead of reality in that moments are made more rhythmic and more colorful. What does not detract from this spectacle of imagination, creativity, and the means to be able to share them with others are the painful nights — written for the sake of character development and plot progression — mirrored by problems that are still very much evident in society, despite generations of stellar discovery and groundbreaking innovation. With ample conversation and proper action urged by art in its many forms, these matters can soon be faint shadows in the light of better mornings that are to come.
