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Dr. Bailey's Monologue About Miscarriage on Grey's Anatomy Has People Talking


Grey’s Anatomy returned last night (January 23) after a brief hiatus—and it was an incredibly emotional episode.

The action picked up after the midseason cliffhanger that saw a car crashing into Joe’s Bar, the regular hangout for the doctors at Grey-Sloan. While we didn’t really get any new information about Alex Karev and how the show will handle Justin Chambers’s permanent departure, fans did get some very emotional scenes between the three remaining OG doctors: Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), and Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo).

In the midseason finale, we learned that Bailey suffered a miscarriage. When we last saw her, she was definitely trying to bottle up her emotions and carry on with her job. In the face of some of her interns hurt in the Joe’s Bar accident, she continued to do just that—and saved lives in the process. But when all was said and done, Bailey needed a release and broke down in a powerful conversation about her loss with Dr. Webber.

“Everyone I touched today, everyone I held in my hands or gave to another surgeon to put back together again — fine,” Bailey said. “But I made that fine. I made that work. This…this…This, I…I am not fine.”

“She [her baby] isn’t fine. And I can’t even hold her in my hands. Or put her in someone else’s hands who can put her back together again,” Bailey cried. “She just was! And now she isn’t. And I can’t do anything but just stand here—stand here and lose her.” Bailey collapses into Webber’s arms and sobs—as did I. Later, he brings Meredith in to comfort her friend with a box of tissues and a box of donuts. Meredith holds Bailey’s hand and says, “I had a miscarriage once. I never felt so lonely.” (Longtime fans will remember Meredith suffered a miscarriage back in season six, when a shooter went on a rampage in the hospital, injuring Derek and leaving Meredith and Cristina to operate on him at gunpoint.)

These are the emotional moments that Grey’s Anatomy has done so well since it premiered in 2005. People on Twitter had strong reactions to Bailey’s monologue:

We’ll surely see more of how Dr. Bailey copes with this devastating loss in future episodes. Prep your tear ducts accordingly.



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Justin Chambers, a.k.a Alex Karev, Is Leaving Grey's Anatomy After 16 Seasons


Justin Chambers, the actor who has starred as Dr. Alex Karev in all 15 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, is finally saying goodbye to the role.

The cause of his departure isn’t a [deep breath] train collision, ferryboat accident, shooting, psychiatric episode, homemade bomb, or unaddressed head trauma. No: Chambers, who has devoted the majority of his professional career to Grey’s, explained his decision in an announcement on Friday, January 10.

“There’s no good time to say goodbye to a show and character that’s defined so much of my life for the past 15 years,” Chambers told Deadline. “For some time now, however, I have hoped to diversify my acting roles and career choices. And, as I turn 50 and am blessed with my remarkable, supportive wife and five wonderful children, now is that time.”

Shock number one: Karev, who is arguably the second most central character on Grey’s—next to the eponymous Meredith Grey—will soon disappear from the show. Shock number two: Justin Chambers is 50? He has five kids? What moisturizer does he use?

Kelsey McNeal/ABC via Getty Images

In his announcement Chambers thanked show creator Shonda Rhimes and his fellow remaining original cast-members—Ellen Pompeo, Chandra Wilson and James Pickens—and the rest of the Grey’s team. It’s not clear from his statement whether he’ll be back for the rest of the 16th season, which returns to ABC on January 23. It is clear that we are sad. Very, very sad.

Grey’s Anatomy is a high-class soap opera—a glossy fantasy that delights in making us salivate over abs and weep until we’re nauseous within the same 40-minute block. The character of Alex Karev—the angry, sometimes cruel child of an addict father and schizophrenic mother, who grew up to be an exceptionally compassionate pediatric surgeon—is the best of that. In him, viewers have watched a person be redeemed. Albeit in the form of a conventionally hot, white man, we have joined a character on the odyssey of becoming a better person. We have seen him renounce sexism and violence and isolation.

For all his model looks and talent for making the word “frickin” sound organic, he’s been the ideal male sidekick to protagonist Meredith Grey (Pompeo) for 15 years. Their decades-long friendship, built on their mutual instinct for survival-at-all-costs, made them demand better from one another. Karev moved away from picking on people who were smaller than him and devoted himself to saving children’s lives. He became the ethical heart of the show. He stopped being angry, and started choosing love.



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How a Grey's Anatomy Episode Led to an Increase in Sexual Assault Awareness


We may be living in the age of too much content (because really, who can get to it all?!?), but a new study shows that one single episode of popular television can still make a big impact on the world. Grey’s Anatomy has been in our lives since it premiered on ABC in 2005, and over the past 15 seasons fans have seen many powerful and emotional episodes. But one, in particular, from last March is proving to have a lasting effect on awareness around sexual assault.

“Silent All These Years” first aired on March 28, 2019 and featured a storyline with a patient named Abby, who Dr. Jo Karev and Dr. Teddy Altman learn has been sexually assaulted. At the time, I wrote about how sensitively the show handled the issue of consent on many levels, but particularly how the doctors treated Abby as they examined her. The episode culminated in an emotional moment where female doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff line the hallway as Abby was taken into surgery because every male face she sees reminds her of her attacker.

At the end of the show, Ellen Pompeo did a PSA for viewers about reaching out for help if they had been affected by sexual violence, and gave information about contacting the National Sexual Assault Hotline operated by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN (800-856-HOPE or via online chat hotline.rainn.org/online/). And now a new study is showing the real-life impact of the show.

Researchers at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences studied search trends on Google and Twitter for two weeks before and one week after the episode aired. They monitored terms like “Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network,” “RAINN,” “sexual assault,” “rape,” “sexual assault hotline,” and tweets mentioning @RAINN. They also collected data from RAINN on call volumes in the 48 hours after the episode aired.

“Engagements with the @RAINN Twitter account and tweets mentioning ‘sexual assault hotline’ increased by 1,097% the day after the episode,” researcher Trevor Torgerson told Reuters Health. They also found the National Sexual Assault Hotline call volume increased by 43% in the 48 hours after the episode, and the volume of searches for the term “RAINN” was 41% larger than expected, and search volumes for “rape” and “sexual assault” were 8% and 9% higher, respectively. In addition, the number of tweets mentioning “sexual assault hotline” and “RAINN” were 1,995% and 292% higher than usual.

“An adored actress, such as Ellen Pompeo, may be able to convince someone to seek help in a way that ‘only’ flashing the hotline number may not be able to. That being said, if flashing the hotline number is all that can be done, we would agree there is a benefit to it,” Torgerson said.

Whatever the factors, it’s incredible to see the impact that one episode of television (in this case, Grey’s Anatomy) can have on the world.



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Ellen Pompeo Just Revealed Her Dream Plot for the Grey's Anatomy Series Finale


Grey’s Anatomy returned to ABC this week for its season 16 (16!) premiere. There doesn’t seem to be a finale in sight for TV’s longest-running medical drama—which Dr. Meredith Grey’s fans are surely relieved to hear. But if and when the lights go out at Seattle Grace Memorial Hospital, star Ellen Pompeo has an epic plan for the series finale.

On a visit to The Late Late Show With James Corden, Pompeo said she’d like the Grey’s Anatomy series finale to be a reunion like TV has never seen. Her dream finale wouldn’t just bring back Dr. Cristina Yang (played by Sandra Oh) or McDreamy (played by Patrick Dempsey). She’d want the entire original cast to return.

“I’d love to have some of the old cast come back,” she said. “But that probably won’t happen. But that would be the most amazing way to end.”

The reason it might not work out? There would be some logistical hurdles to clear if every single character returned, thanks to show runner Shonda Rhimes’s legendary plot twists. “Some of them were killed on the show,” the actress noted.

And, Pompeo added, even the woman who brought us Meredith Grey for almost two decades can prescribe the wrong ending. “The ending, the final episode, matters so much,” she said. “And the fans are never going to be happy no matter what. Sopranos, Game of Thrones, they’re pissed no matter what you do. So, there’s a lot of pressure on that final episode.”

But anything can happen on Grey’s Anatomy, so why not explore wild plot directions including the resurrection of the original cast? After all, this is the drama that gave viewers secret long-lost siblings, surgeries that doubled as bomb detonations, and musicals set at a hospital.

“You know, the fun thing about doing a show for 16 years and having a loyal, amazing, fantastic audience is we can really just play and have fun,” Pompeo said. And if any fandom could accept a crazy finale with open arms, it’s the legions who’ve been checked into Seattle Grace Memorial’s dramas from the beginning.

Catch Pompeo’s entire Late Late Show interview below.

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Ellen Pompeo Says the 'Toxic' Environment on Grey's Anatomy Almost Made Her Quit


Ellen Pompeo has spent 14 years (and counting) on Grey’s Anatomy, but in a recent interview she revealed she almost cut her time on the hit show short because of a “toxic work environment.” Speaking to Taraji P. Henson for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Pompeo revealed there were once “serious culture issues” on set. (Pompeo has played the show’s lead character, Meredith Grey, since the medical drama premiered in 2005.)

“It’s funny, I never wanted off the bus in the year that I could get off,” Pompeo says. “The first 10 years we had serious culture issues, very bad behavior, really toxic work environment. But once I started having kids, it became no longer about me. I need to provide for my family.”

She goes on to explain that she focused on making lasting changes on the show and seeing more results after season 10.

Pompeo as Meredith Grey

Byron Cohen via Getty Images

“After Season 10, we had some big shifts in front of the camera, behind the camera. It became my goal to have an experience there that I could be happy and proud about, because we had so much turmoil for 10 years,” she says. “My mission became, this can’t be fantastic to the public and a disaster behind the scenes. Shonda Rhimes and I decided to rewrite the ending of this story. That’s what’s kept me.”

What’s more, “Patrick Dempsey left the show in Season 11, and the studio and network believed the show could not go on without the male lead. So I had a mission to prove that it could. I was on a double mission.”

Ellen Pompeo talking to Kelly McCreary while directing an episode of Grey's Anatomy

Pompeo directing an episode of Grey’s Anatomy

Mitch Haaseth via Getty Images

Pompeo has spoken out about wage disparities in Hollywood before, which she knows about firsthand: She says at the beginning of the series Dempsey was paid almost double her salary. “He had a television quote. I had never done TV,” she explains.

“I didn’t even realize until we were renegotiating season three,” she says. “No one was offering that up.”

Last year Pompeo became the highest-paid actress on a TV drama when she inked a $20 million deal for the show’s fifteenth and sixteenth seasons. And she’s still focused on changing the culture behind the scenes. “I haven’t been challenged creatively at all,” she says of the show. “Every once in a while we do an amazing storyline. But for the last five years, I’ve had other milestones that we were trying to achieve behind the camera.”



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Grey's Anatomy 'Silent All These Years' Recap: Everyone Should See This Powerful Message About Consent


Leave it to a Shonda Rhimes show to give us one of the most definitive episodes of television about consent that I’ve ever seen. This week’s Grey’s Anatomy took on the topic from multiple angles—and the result was incredibly emotional, powerful, and, I hope, educational.

The episode centers around Dr. Jo Karev (Camilla Luddington) in two different storylines. In flashbacks, we see Jo meet her birth mother, the woman who abandoned her at a fire station as a baby. But after finally letting her mother know how much resentment and anger she still feels, Jo learns she was the product of the rape of her teenage mother.

Then, back at Grey Sloan Memorial, Jo meets a patient named Abby (Khalilah Joi), who she believes has been abused in a domestic situation. Jo, herself a victim of domestic abuse, handles the situation with care—and soon she learns Abby has also been sexually assaulted.

When Jo brings in another female doctor, Teddy Altman (Kim Raver), to help with the situation, they make sure Abby knows she is in a safe space where she can talk if she wants to. Eventually, Abby reveals she was raped after leaving a bar—but she’s afraid to tell her husband as well as the police, because she knows all too well that her actions may be twisted into a victim-blaming scenario. The portrayal of Abby’s reaction to her trauma is incredibly powerful to watch, and so is the doctors’ desire to give her agency in her treatment while holding their own emotions in check.

Once they begin collecting evidence for a rape kit (after Abby gives her OK), the process is shown in heartbreaking detail. What stood out to me is how the doctors ask their patient at each step if she’s ready to proceed. They do nothing until they hear her verbally say, “Yes.” And once they do have her permission, they are methodical yet still sensitive as they swab the bite marks on her skin and take samples from inside her body. It’s even more gut-wrenching when you consider that it’s possible some women may not receive the same kind of care. “What you did today, with Abby, that was not protocol…it should be,” Teddy later tells Jo.

But when it’s time to take Abby to surgery, she tells the doctors that every man she sees reminds her of her rapist. So the women of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital line the hallway with female faces—doctors, nurses, orderlies, administrative staff—and physically block male staff from entering space. All so Abby can feel safe. At this point, I sobbed. It was an amazing visual of women standing up for other women.

The show adds another layer of consent when Dr. Ben Warren (Jason Winston George) is shown having a talk about it with his adolescent stepson, Tuck. “You pay attention to the girl you’re with,” he tells the young man. “You need to care about her feelings, her joy, at least as much as you care about your own. And she gets to change her mind at any time. If she says ‘stop’ or stops having fun, you just plain stop. Time out. Game over.” It really is that simple—and I’m grateful to the show I’ve loved for all these years for stating it so plainly.

One big reason why Grey’s Anatomy was able to handle this episode in such a sensitive and multi-faceted way? Because it’s led by women, including Rhimes and showrunnner Krista Vernoff. This episode, aptly titled “Silent All These Years” after the Tori Amos song about a sexual assault, was also written by a woman, Elisabeth Finch, and directed by a woman, Debbie Allen. It was inspired, in part, by Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings. “How it didn’t mean anything, it hurt our souls,” Vernoff told Entertainment Weekly. “I went to the writers and said, ‘The message that has just been sent to all young women is that consent doesn’t matter. We have an opportunity here to teach men and women about consent and to talk about how lasting and impactful rape can be for generations.'”



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