Any Grey's fans interested in a discussion of Private Practice can follow the link in this post to our sister site's forum thread. The spin-off officially made its debut last night, and was significantly better than the pilot we saw in May. But what we're really excited for is the real deal - Grey's Anatomy - at 9 tonight!
"Grey's Anatomy season premiere tonight?! Sweet! High five!"
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Over the second half of last season, Grey's Anatomy went from being the TV pal with whom every get-together feels like a giddy first date, to something more along the lines of a house guest who constantly gets on your nerves.
That's the assessment of the Contra Costa Times, and while it may seem a hit harsh, there's no doubt that many fans grew frustrated in Season 3.
The same with the cast members, who squabbled over the Isaiah Washington situation off screen, while on screen, a dark cloud hung over SGH.
Death, destruction and personal devastation reigned.
And oh, those creative missteps: Best pals George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) and Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) making booty calls? Ugh.
By the time the season of discontent was over, two key cast members were gone �" Washington and Kate Walsh, whose spin-off series, Private Practice, debuts tonight.
Gone, too, was much of the good will the show had built up.
As Grey's Anatomy returns for its fourth season tomorrow on ABC, its vital signs are strong, but still we wonder: Can this show get back to being the funny, frothy, intoxicating guilty pleasure it once was?
Fortunately, creator Shonda Rhimes is saying all the right things: It's time to lighten up, sex it up and have a blast!
"I came back to this season sort of mandating that we have a lot of fun," she told TV writers this summer. "I felt like Season 3 was a dark season. It just is. I mean, Meredith's (Ellen Pompeo) mom dies. George's dad dies. Meredith's stepmother dies. It was a bloodbath. But I want to get back to us enjoying it and having fun."
Still, Shonda Rhimes by no means cops to creative mismanagement.
While she admits the behind-the-scenes drama of last season was difficult, she stands by the direction of the show's storytelling: "It felt like the journey these characters needed to take" - and even the George and Izzie plotline.
"I understand it," she says of negative reaction to the unexpected couple. "I think, when Meredith and Cristina (Sandra Oh) and Alex (Justin Chambers) find out, they are going to have some pretty vitriolic reactions as well. I think that's part of what makes it interesting. The characters are flawed. They are really human.
And I'm not necessarily saying that George and Izzie are the love story of the century. People make mistakes. And perhaps this is a mistake. Perhaps it isn't. But I think it's an interesting thing to explore - that a best friend is your soul mate."
Here's an extended preview of tomorrow's Grey's Anatomy premiere, "A Change is Gonna Come." This four-minute clip, courtesy of Access Hollywood, features a lot of the clips we've been seeing leading up to the Season Four opener, as well as some material you might not have seen prior to now. Check it out:
"Good morning, my friends. How lucky we are to be here," Patrick Dempsey says.
Grey skies have cleared up on the set of ABC's hit drama.
The doc known as McDreamy practically sings this greeting to Grey's Anatomy crew members as he merrily arrives at ABC's Prospect Studios in a black leather jacket, the morning after the Emmys, to shoot the new season's sixth episode.
Sure, there's a little sarcasm.
Many in the room partied past midnight to celebrate the show's best drama nomination and co-star Katherine Heigl's win as best supporting actress.
This morning scene is a simple one, requiring Dempsey to pass by Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) in the corridor without saying much. So instead, he playfully sticks out his tongue during a rehearsal.
"It's hard being pretty and talking," Patrick Dempsey cracks over breakfast. "I had to starve myself for three days before the Emmys to fit into my tuxedo."
Dempsey jokes that series creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes, who is now devoting half of her time to the spin-off, Private Practice, is no longer around �" "over on that other show... Boston Public."
And he teases that he has had sex with the whole crew.
"It's all about the love in Season 4," the actor chirps. "Sex with everybody. I had the entire writing staff in Season 3." This inspires crew members to pipe in with their own mock confessions of liaisons with Patrick Dempsey.
During a break, the handsome star acknowledges that the levity is intentional.
"I think it's really important to keep a light energy, more now than ever," he says. "It's my responsibility to come in here, have my work done, do it quickly, and get in and get out of here and make this a pleasurable experience. I decided after all that happened last year to just have fun."
Continue reading this article here ...
For those who are interested in Grey's Anatomy spoilers, Kristin Veitch of E! Online has a few from the new season, which begins in two days! Those of you opposed to Grey's Anatomy spoilers, don't follow the jump ...
Continue Reading...
The awesome Ellen Pompeo enjoyed a break from filming Grey's Anatomy by taking a Sunday stroll on the beach with one of her pet dogs in Malibu, Calif.
The Grey's Anatomy star enjoyed a fun summer. Ellen Pompeo revealed to USA Today that she recently babysat co-star Patrick Dempsey's baby twins!
"Over the summer, Ellen Pompeo and her fiancé, Chris Ivery, visited Dempsey and wife Jillian in London while he was shooting a film in Scotland. Pompeo helped babysit the couple's twin sons, now eight months, and says she can easily tell them apart: Sullivan "is a little more serious and a little bigger, maybe an athlete, and Darby looks more like a thinker and a poet. He may be the artist."
Better, stronger, faster. There's a new breed of heroines on TV, and while there has always been something about a hot chick in a latex jumpsuit, the female heroine has been undergoing a spectacular renaissance.
From suburban protagonists such as the ladies of Wisteria Lane or the wicked Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) of Weeds, to serious super-chicks such as Alias' Sydney Bristow or the cheerleader from Heroes (Hayden Panettiere), and a dearth of doctors (Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice), the sisterhood has never been so strong.
And now an old favorite joins the ranks as Jaime Sommers â" a.k.a. the Bionic Woman â" makes a triumphant return on October 4.
Indeed, while all the networks are generously endowed with wonderful female leads at the moment, ABC's is particularly rich. With Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters and Ugly Betty, what's not to like?
"These leading ladies are very strong characters, they're jumping through burning buildings, saving the universe, saving lives, burning down the neighbors' house, living double lives, and looking immaculate â" all in a day's work" said one exec.
"It's pure action, adventure, escapism."
And it's something audiences, male and female, have always responded to.
As some shows, such as Desperate Housewives, do tend to attract bigger numbers of female viewers, others, such as Heroes or even Grey's Anatomy after its first of three seasons, actually attract a pretty even gender mix.
Continue reading this article here ...
In an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the set of Grey's Anatomy, USA Today's William Keck lends his observations of what goes on that we don't see...
Sandra Oh looks sleepy, wrapped in a parka and heading to her chair. Hers is special compared with all the others' standard-issue director's chairs. Oh's has extra padding, a fancy curved foot rest and a canvas compartment under the seat. While the other actors have their full names silk-screened onto the backs of their chairs, Sandra Oh's is marked with two block letters: OH. She never talks to on-set journalists, but she offers a friendly late-in-the-day wink as she walks by.
Trailer mates
Justin Chambers (Alex Karev) shares his trailer, or "tin box," as he calls it, with Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens). "I hear her loud mouth all the time �" girl's got a loud mouth," he kids. Heigl slams right back: She says she has to listen to "trailer buddy" Chambers' daily doses of Judge Judy or Montel Williams. "I think he falls asleep with the TV on," she playfully groans. Chambers has more expansive digs off-set. Over the summer he purchased a California home with his wife Keisha. Each of his five kids now has his or her own room!
Cute little cuss
Sandra Oh has a habit of playfully cussing in scenes when she's not on camera, at one point asking Ellen Pompeo, "What the (expletive) was that?" and calling Pompeo's Meredith "a whore." Says T.R. Knight (George), who shares his on-set trailer with Oh: "She has done that, always."
Good thing Chyler Leigh has a sense of humor.
Talking about McDreamy and McSteamy with her on the set, Will Keck of USA Today complimented Chyler on her real-life McDreamy - a handsome actor.
Which was nice, until his name was mentioned (Jason Behr of Roswell), and Chyler looked as if the reporter were from another planet.
Jason Behr, it turns out, is actually the husband of Private Practice actress KaDee Strickland (and the ex-boyfriend of Katherine Heigl, incidentally).
Fortunately, Leigh just laughed and talked about her love for actor Nathan West, her actual husband. Unfortunately, she wouldn't fill us in on who her character is going to hook up with this season. Stay tuned on that.
New faces are checking in to Seattle Grace to help fill recent vacancies. Veteran actor Edward Herrmann, 64, signs up for a few episodes as Norman, the world's oldest intern; someone from the past may be returning (we're not telling who); as well as Diahann Carroll, as Dr. Preston Burke's mom.
But the biggest staffing change is Chyler Leigh, 25, who plays a character with a familiar last name: Grey. Meredith's half-sister, Dr. Lexie Grey.
While having another Grey around naturally complicates life for Ellen Pompeo's character, cast members rave about the addition of Leigh.
"She's the sweetest, coolest, funniest chick," says Katherine Heigl (Izzie).
"I think she is one of those girls who is quiet, because it's her first season on the show. I imagine it's awkward and difficult to come in to a cast that has been here for years. But you spend a little one-on-one time with her, and she's hysterical."
Chyler Leigh has much to celebrate beyond landing a role on one of the hottest dramas on TV in Grey's Anatomy. It comes after some very rocky times.
Born in Charlotte and raised in Virginia Beach, her folks divorced when she was 12. She moved with her mother to Miami, where the mother remarried her first husband. Like Lexie Grey, she, too, has distant half-siblings.
The Season Four premiere of Grey's Anatomy has come and gone and given way to a whole new season of Caption Contest fodder. This is the last edition of Insider's Caption Contest with an older photo for awhile.
It was a tough call, as always, with so many good entries. In the end, we chose McDreamys Lover. Something about the Feist lyrics resonated!
Congratulations to the winner and thanks to all of you, as always, for playing and for making Grey's Anatomy Insider the #1 Grey's Anatomy website online. Scroll down the page for the full list of responses we received, and good luck again this week! We appreciate your continued support!
Here is this week's Caption Contest image:
Callie: "One, Two, Three, Four. Tell me that you love me more. Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth was for."
George: "That's the definition of our marriage."
"TBA"
Thursday, January 14, 9 p.m. (NEW, 6.11)
