Grey's Anatomy writer Mark Wilding, who authored last night's episode, has posted his thoughts on "Life During Wartime" on the writers' blog.
Here's what he had to say about Major Hunt, Anatomy Jane, pigs and more ...
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First things first. No animals were harmed in the filming of "Life During Wartime." None. I know ABC ran that thing before the show that told you that, but I figured you should hear it from me too. Those four pigs were entirely and utterly fake. Fake, fake, fake.
... I thought we were pretty evenhanded in dealing with the issue of animal testing. I heard from both sides as we were shooting the episode (boy, did I hear). Compelling arguments were made on BOTH sides - including one surgeon who told me that a day after learning to do open heart surgery on a pig, she used the same technique on a human being THE NEXT DAY. She told me point blank, without a doubt in her mind, that if she hadn’t learned that procedure there’s no way she would have saved that person’s life.
At any rate, I thought it was a cool way to bring back Major Owen Hunt.
Even if people at Seattle Grace were appalled by what he did, his goal in the wet lab was to teach people. And to teach them the best way he knows how.
Teaching, incidentally, is one of our major themes this year.
See one, do one, teach one. You want to move up from being the number 12 hospital in the country, you’ve gotta fight that fight on all fronts. Be it operating on pigs, hiring better doctors or doing a better job with the doctors who are already here.
Anyway, I think we came to understand Owen’s attitude toward the pigs at the end of the episode when he tells Cristina about losing all his army buddies in the RPG attack. If you’ve seen 19 of your friends die in one day, it tends to make other things in your life not seem quite as important or dramatic.
My wife really doesn’t care what Owen (Kevin McKidd) does or doesn’t do to pigs. She’s just glad to see him back at Seattle Grace. REALLY, REALLY GLAD.
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