Acacia Bernier, Staff Writer
An insightful analysis into the longevity, influence, and legacy of Grey’s Anatomy over the past 20 years.
It all began the minute this show popped onto the face of the earth in 2005. Grey’s Anatomy is a medical drama broadcast on ABC, bringing the lives of fictional interns and residents to the screen. While many thought of it as another shallow show full of a good looking cast but no content, after the first season aired it was evident that it would surmount to more. Set in the Seattle Grace Hospital, it follows the life of surgeons, including the protagonist Meredith Grey, as they adapt to the tumultuous lifestyle of healthcare professionals while juggling their personal lives. The love triangles, continuous life-or-death instances, and the satisfying cherry on top ending of each episode makes it addicting for anybody. It’s glamorous, thrilling, and undeniably influential. For over the past 20 years, with over 20 seasons, the show has cultivated a new generation of young people who desire to go into the medical field. However, this can be seen as both a beneficial outcome, but also a painstakingly misleading one.
While the show has been instrumental in the way that it has facilitated those to get a look inside the strenuous and demanding healthcare system, it has also been quite false in this way. Let’s be real, the life of a surgeon, while quite dramatic compared to other occupations, is nowhere near the dramatized and exaggerated perspective in Grey’s Anatomy. While it gets many excited and intrigued, it also fills many with a contorted idea of what the career actually entails. One primarily sees this in the portrayal of Meredith Grey and her continuously mingling her personal life with her professional one. The show begins immediately with her beginning a romantic relationship with one of the residents in the hospital she is interning at. Of course drama ensues and many twists and turns unfold, as any show ought to, but for anyone to believe that such is likely in reality is truly misguided. However there are advantageous outcomes as well in terms of its influence.
While there may have been other shows at the time, including the sitcom Scrubs, and the medical drama ER, both of which predated Grey’s Anatomy, neither have had the longevity that the latter has accumulated. Why is this? Well, while Scrubs put a comedic twist to the hospital setting, and a gritty realism was evident in ER, it was truly the compelling and emotional narratives interwoven to each medical case in a unique and enticing way that distinguished the show from competing ones. That and its undeniable focus on the romantic and soapy storytelling, hooking in the audience to follow the love and relationship status of each character. It kept the audience engaged, and did so in an increasingly systematic way that allowed for the show to continue on for 20 years and counting.
Grey’s Anatomy in many ways, neglecting its unrealistic components, truly does serve the younger population. Primarily, it offers many an initial spark of curiosity into the medical field that may not have existed without the show. It takes away many of the complexities and strips the medical scene down to the normal person, while still providing enough convincing jargon and dialogue to make one feel as though they are there inside the OR room with the surgeons. It takes lessons related to death, loss and coping and puts it into the perspective of the medical professionals, establishing a line of humanity that often lacks in many parts of television.
Thus one can see that while the show had significant medical inaccuracies, possibly leading to unrealistic expectations and distorted perceptions between reality and show for the viewers, it has also opened a door of interest to the young audience that cares to learn more about the medical field. For it does not matter where the seed comes from, but as long as it has the desire and intelligence to grow, in the end it has the opportunity to flourish. In the same way, the Grey’s Anatomy Effect is real. It will continue to strike younger audiences and that seed of curiosity will be planted into their hearts, and whether it grows or not will be up to them.