Grey’s Anatomy: Season Two
”Pick me, choose me, love me,” Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) implored Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd early in the second season of Grey’s Anatomy. And while McDreamy passed, America, against all odds, took her up on her offer.
I say ”against all odds” because Grey’s, once overshadowed by Lost and Desperate Housewives, emerged by the end of its sophomore year as ABC’s strongest drama, thanks to a killer episode that aired after the Super Bowl (and smartly gets commentary treatment on the six-disc Grey’s Anatomy: Season Two DVD set) and a heart-wrenching season finale. (No commentary on that one, but it’s an extended cut — one of four in the collection — worth rewatching, Kleenex in hand.)
The strengths of Grey’s aptly named for the bluish-gray hues it’s shot in — are even more sturdy in marathon DVD viewing. As season 2 unfolds, Sandra Oh’s Cristina and particularly Chandra Wilson’s Miranda (this lady deserves any acting award anyone wants to throw at her) expertly evolve what could have been shrill, one-note characters. And the unheralded Kate Walsh is so cleverly goofy answering viewers’ questions in a bonus featurette that you realize how good an actor she is to transform every week into her grave, sorta-wronged woman, Dr. Addison Shepherd. Creator Shonda Rhimes’ terrific eye for casting also extends to the smallest of guest roles. Thoroughbred workhorses placed in life-threatening predicaments include Kyle Chandler (who received an Emmy nod for his portrayal of a bomb-squad expert), Laurie Metcalf, The L Word‘s Leisha Hailey, Mare Winningham, and Mary Kay Place in the standout episode ”Superstition.” (Let’s find that woman her own series.)
Speaking of life-threatening predicaments, it’s easy to wish that bomb had taken out Meredith during the post-Super Bowl episode. She didn’t become any more likable as she slept with puppy-dog doc George (T.R. Knight) and spouted lines like ”She’s got my McLife. And what have I got? Do you know I can’t even remember the last time we kissed?… Plus my conditioner stopped working.” It’s risky to have the heart of a TV series beat in a chest cavity that doesn’t belong to the main character. (I’d argue that the show’s true heart resides either in Katherine Heigl’s broken Izzie or in James Pickens Jr.’s Chief Webber, described by the actor as ”Cliff Huxtable in bizarro world.”) But Rhimes has secured our trust in so many other ways — in her unprecedented color-blind casting, and how she deftly sutures and fractures the relationships of the five interns — that she’s earned the right to muck around with a heroine drawn in shades of gray.