October 2006 News Archive

Historically, TV medical dramas arrive in pairs.

In 1961, Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey established popular practices. In 1969, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Medical Center started offering diagnoses. In 1994, Chicago Hope and ER battled for viewers while saving lives.

NBC's ER ultimately won. In its 13th season, and with none of the original stars remaining, a reinvented ER flourishes in a surprising medical boom, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

ER wins its time slot at 10 p.m. Thursday nights... even as Grey's Anatomy on ABC ranks as TV's top overall show an hour before.

Fox's House, which moves to 9 p.m. Tuesday next week, has been a smash hit in its own right and made a star out of Hugh Laurie.

Eager for a piece of the medical action, CBS is pinning its hopes on 3 Lbs, which debuts November 14. Stanley Tucci (above) plays a neurosurgeon; the title refers to the brain's weight.

"If the four are successful at once, it will be a first in TV history," says Tim Brooks, co-author of The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows.

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While Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a hit, the show it came from, where people and not houses, are given the makeovers, is apparently not.

It's being taken off the ABC schedule, the Associated Press reports, and in its Friday, 8 p.m. time slot, the network will again be running repeats of Grey's Anatomy. The re-runs of the previous night's new episodes will air at least through the November ratings period.

ABC planned on shelving its weekly Grey's Anatomy encore as of October 20, but decided it would rather go that route than bring back Extreme Makeover.

We don't blame them! After all, who cares about someone getting a makeover (fun as it may be) when you can just watch Patrick Dempsey.

It does look good... or maybe that's just the person buying them! On a recent shopping excursion, Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl, 27, scooped up three Lula by Angelica Cota handbags (price: $365) and a Voom dress at Beverly Hills boutique Harmony Lane.

We know she hasn't deposited her check yet, but wouldn't Izzie look hip with one of those bags? It would really compliment the blue scrubs...

Thursday nights are about to get a bit more competitive for Grey's Anatomy -- and the producers of the series that will oppose it are well aware of what they're up against.

Last week, Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs, poked fun at the quirky comedy entering the same Thursday time slot as Grey's, saying how he wants to re-name star Zach Braff "McWeenie," or "McCheesy."

Now Josh Schwartz (right), creator of The OC, has done him one better.

According to an interview Schwartz did with the Boston Globe, one of the male characters will leave Orange County -- for a job at Seattle Grace Hospital -- the fictional medical center where Grey's Anatomy is set.

Now that would be fun to watch -- if it weren't on at the same time as Grey's. You know you've become a staple of popular culture when both series going up against you simultaneously poke fun and pay tribute to you.

Imagine this: A gorgeous, smart and witty man shows up in your living room, or perhaps even your bedroom, once a day or several times a week.

He doesn't leave dirty dishes in the sink or wet towels on the bathroom floor. He never looks anything other than incredible every time you see him. And unlike some of the guys you know in real life" he never makes wisecracks about your mom, your shoes or your weight.

Thing is, he doesn't know you're alive.

He's your TV Boyfriend.

The Chicago Sun-Times recently asked its readers to tell us which guys on the small screen make them swoon -- and inspire them to move heaven and earth just to catch them on TV. We probably don't have to tell you who was high atop the list.

It's no surprise that TV doctors were big favorites, with both Mekhi Phifer and Goran Visnjic of ER, and Patrick Dempsey and Eric Dane (a.k.a. McDreamy and McSteamy) from Grey's Anatomy leaving their mark on viewers.

Perhaps because they took votes away from each other, none of those TV docs claimed the top spot. Thorsten Kaye, the dark-haired cutie who plays rich casino owner Zach Slater on All My Children, was the top vote getter.

Readers also flip for Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, 24's Kiefer Sutherland and CSI's Carmine Giovinazzo.

When inviting readers to choose their dream TV boyfriends, the Sun-Times didn't ask women whether they were single, married or otherwise involved.

This is pure fantasy, ladies.

"Part of what people like about TV and entertainment is it takes them out of their lives [so they can] be in another world for a while," says Sarah D. Bunting, who co-wrote Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV.

"Being in a world where you work with Patrick Dempsey [of Grey's Anatomy] is not a bad state of affairs for a lot of people. A woman's TV boyfriend might be a bad boy who she wouldn't be into in real life. There's an escapism element to it."

Many women pick their TV boyfriends based on actual boyfriend attributes, such as being smart and having a sense of humor.

But, Bunting says, "some people just do want to gaze upon this man for 47 minutes. It's like watching a bad sitcom, but not asking too many questions.

Perhaps she was just eager to talk about anything but the controversy that has been surrounding her hit show in recent weeks, but Shonda Rhimes -- the notoriously secretive creator and executive producer of Grey's Anatomy -- threw fans a major piece of gossip in a recent interview.

"There's going to be a wedding in the near future," she told People magazine. "And it's going to be spectacular."

Rhimes' comments to the magazine regarding star Isaiah Washington and his alleged remarks toward co-star T.R. Knight were published Thursday. The print version of People contains a considerably longer article, however, which included this minor spoiler from Shonda.

The unabridged report also included additional interviews with the cast. Both James Pickens, Jr., who plays Dr. Webber, and memorable guest star Jeffrey Dean Morgan defended Washington's character and downplayed the fight that has dominated headlines of late.

Rhimes didn't say who would get married or how soon, of course, but the prospect of a Grey's Anatomy wedding already has us guessing.

We certainly have some ideas, as you surely do. Who do you think it is, and when do you think it will occur? We'll have to wait and see.

Some pictures just speak for themselves. Here's our man Patrick Dempsey in an advertisement for Serengeti eyewear, as seen in the Australian edition of Travel & Leisure magazine. Special thanks to the fan who sent this our way!

Starting this Monday, our very own SeattleGirl will be providing her take on the events of the previous episode. Since there was no episode last week, she focused on the Season 3 premiere, "Time Has Come Today," which aired again Thursday. Below is the first edition of our Monday Grey Chatter.

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This first episode of the new season was promising in many ways. It wasn’t as jam-packed with the drama and medical cases as we’re used to, but the major things that we were looking for happened.

Derek told Meredith that he loves her.

Really, does anything else from the episode even matter?

He told her he loves her. And she didn’t say anything back. She stood there, first letting Finn go on and on about his hat being in some kind of ring. And then she stood there and listened to Derek profess his own love, verbally kicking himself for choosing Addison to begin with. And Meredith doesn’t say a word.

Maybe she’s regretting the decision she made last night, or maybe she’s overwhelmed with the two nearly perfect men who have just declared their devotion to her. Either way, her silence tells us that she’s beyond just indecisive -- she’s also dark and twisty.

The underlying theme, and the episode title, have to do with time. Time flying, time not waiting, time to let go, time to move on. To drive this point home, the episode itself flew from present happenings to intermittent flashbacks, usually in a whirlwind of emotions and events.

• We see Derek leaving Addison, throwing her clothes and her crying form out into the rain.
• We see Meredith starting to piece together the details of her mother and father’s separation.
• We see Izzie and Alex meeting for the first time, as well as Meredith and George and Meredith and Derek.

These are important things. We’re seeing into the past lives of the people we have come to know at Seattle Grace. Now that we’re all a few episodes wiser, we can also pick out the foreshadowing that occurs in this first episode.

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The life of a celebrity has its ups and downs.

For the past three years, it's been a lot of ups for Kate Walsh.

For starters, the actress is one of the stars of Grey's Anatomy, the ABC hospital drama that is now TV's No. 1 show.

Her fame started as soon as Walsh appeared as the striking Dr. Addison Montgomery Shepherd, the jilted, philandering wife of Dr. Derek Shepherd, and one-third of one of TV's greatest love triangles.

"I never imagined this," Walsh told the Arizona Daily Star, as she returned to her onetime hometown of Tucson, Az., where she attended Catalina and Rincon high schools as well as the University of Arizona.

"For a show that's in a competitive environment to stand out is great."

With celebrity comes the opportunity to become a celebrity face for issues she holds in high regard. Organizations came calling rather quickly.

She's been involved with the Special Olympics and the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (she made public service announcements for it during a recent episode) and hopes to get Habitat for Humanity interested.

But right now her priority is Planned Parenthood, the organization known mostly for its stance on abortion rights, but which also pushes for sexual and reproductive education.

Attending a benefit for Planned Parenthood at Club Congress on Saturday — the same place she once worked as a cocktail waitress while discovering herself as an actress — Walsh spoke with joy about the bizarre fact that people pay attention to her more now that she's on a hit show.

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We know Katherine Heigl is beautiful, and that's she's done a great deal of modeling over the years. But that doesn't mean she's not modest -- or that stripping on the set comes easy for her.

Heigl recently revealed her unusual, but effective method for dealing with what was an uncomfortable situation. In order to overcome her shyness over filming scenes in the near-buff for Grey's Anatomy, she jokingly asked the crew to drop their clothes as well.

Katherine admits she felt uncomfortable when she had to shoot her first underwear scene as Izzie Stevens in the sometimes-racy drama series, and was thrilled when the staff and crew complied with her half-serious request.

"I'm very comfortable with my body. I'm super okay with it in the dark in my own home; that's fine," Heigl said. "But, on a set in front of not only an entire crew, but then we had a whole bunch of background actors for this one particular scene I had to do... It was a very empowering scene but I felt very insecure and very scared."

That's when Katherine's idea came to her.

"I jokingly said to the director... 'Why don't you get in your underwear, if I have to get in my underwear?' And he actually did... and then so did the crew. It was fun. It definitely relieved a lot of the tension for me. It took a lot of the eyes off me, which was nice."