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Michelle Sing
Prof. Drake
English 207
February 15, 2011
Grey’s Anatomy: A Drama of Cheap Tricks
Grey’s Anatomy is an ABC drama television series based around the lives of Meredith,
Cristina, Dereck, Izzie, Preston and Georgie who are the residents, interns, doctors and mentors
in the fictional Seattle hospital Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. The setting is primarily in the
hospital and sometimes in the character’s homes. The show is based on the character’s lives as
medical professionals and their troubles in relationships. The particular episode I watched is
called “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” This is the last episode of the first season which I chose to watch
because it had such a high viewer rating. This episode is about several of the interns dealing with
secrets. Meredith is hiding the whereabouts of her mother from her boyfriend Dereck, Cristina is
trying to hide her pregnancy from her boyfriend Preston, and Georgie is trying to keep the fact
that he has syphilis secret. The hospital staff deals with an STD breakout and Meredith discovers
Dereck is still married by the end of the episode.
Since Grey’s Anatomy is a TV drama, the over arching goal is to hook the viewers on the
characters lives to keep high ratings. More specifically, the show is trying to prove that the
characters are relatable to the audience and that the audience should care about the character’s
life problems enough to feel they can live through the characters. They are scripted to be
interesting and be involved in a little of the type of drama the audience does not have or wishes
they had more of. Much of the dialogue on the show deals with sexual topics or has sexual
innuendo to attract the audience to the characters and make their problems seem more interesting
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than they are. This tactic runs on the assumption that the audience won’t look past the high focus
on sex to the quality of the plot. I personally did not find the show particularly persuasive to this
end or find its goals valid because the tactics are too simply applied. But it obviously deceives
most people since the show is still airing with an impressive amount of viewers. The methods of
Grey’s Anatomy are not unethical since they are not really encouraging unethical behavior or
harming the audience.
Much of the strategy in Grey’s Anatomy for attracting an audience lies in establishing a
strong ethos. The show’s main focus is the lives of the characters, making them likeable and
making their lives interesting. The setting and the character’s role easily establishes credibility.
The main characters are all doctors in Seattle, a prestigious title and place to be practicing.
They’re a racially mixed group (making them “cultured”) of twenty-something year olds.
Doctors are figures most people see as trustworthy, moral, caring, and accomplished, and these
attributes are transferred to the Grey’s Anatomy characters. In the particular episode I watched,
most of the show is focused on their sex lives. Even situations away from the characters are still
establishing this focus on sex. One of the patients in the episode is informed by his doctor he has
developed an ovary and must have surgery to remove it. Instead of asking about the risks of the
surgery, the man is concerned about whether he’ll have sex problems as a result of the surgery.
Instances such as these keep sex as the top thought in the audiences mind.
This particular appeal rests in social stereotypes. It takes advantage of how Americans
view doctors and sex and the two are sometimes mixed to make doctors as sex icons. In modern
culture, American people seem to have an obsession with sex. Combine this with young,
attractive doctors and the audience is instantly captivated because these doctors are not only
accomplished, but they have sex lives which makes them a step above the rest. This technique is
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simple and oddly effective. Sex is an inherently exciting topic that all people are interested in,
relate to or want to relate to. By keeping it in the audiences mind constantly, the show takes
advantage of this obsession. Much of the ethos lies in the audience keeping a strong correlation
between sex the main characters. Because the audience sees the doctors as good and interesting
people, what they do is what the audience thinks they should be doing as well. So to understand
how exciting people should be acting, they trust the characters and watch Grey’s Anatomy.
We see this technique in ads and commercials. Ironically, the public objects to marketing
using sex to objectify both genders, but the public doesn’t seem to mind watching a show
blatantly based around this subject. For this reason, I don’t find using sex appeal as a valid
technique in establishing the characters ethos. But this appeal also is not convincing because the
show creates an illusion that sex makes people interesting and trustworthy when this clearly is
not true in the real world.
The main way Grey’s Anatomy appeals to the audiences values is by using the patients as
comparisons to the main characters. All the patients in this episode are down played and shown
as rude or immoral in comparison to the main characters. The first patient is a father and we see
the wife and daughter in the hospital with him. The daughter is scripted to be extremely rude to
her father to show that she hates him for being an alcoholic. She speaks over her mother and
disregards her apparent wishes for her daughter to be at least cordial with her father. The father
eventually dies in the episode and the attending interns Izzie and Cristina feel responsible for his
death. They try to convince the mother and daughter to let them perform an autopsy to find out
the cause of death. The daughter makes it clear she thinks he father’s drinking caused his death,
doesn’t want them to perform the autopsy, and frankly does not want anything more to do with
him. The mother however wants to do what her husband would have wanted, so she wants the
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autopsy. Cristina and Izzie end up performing the autopsy illegally under the pretense of
respecting the mother’s wishes.
The next patient is the man with the ovary. During his surgery to remove the ovary, the
surgeons discovered that he is sterile. This is clearly bad news, but on top of this revelation, the
man’s wife is pregnant. Ovary man has been sterile his whole life which unmistakably means his
wife has cheated on him. Preston, the doctor who diagnosed ovary man also happens to be his
best friend. Preston speaks with the wife who is begging him not to tell her husband of her
infidelity. Preston tells her he won’t because his friend’s wife has asked him not to, but he must
tell Preston because he is his doctor. Both situations with the patients are being used to appeal to
the values of the audience to show that the main characters are good and moral people.
The bad behavior of the patients cues the audience to take sides with the main characters.
The daughter’s blatant disrespect to her parents is directly against how most people were raised.
Ovary man’s wife makes it clear she does not feel bad for cheating on her husband in the
slightest shows her to be completely apathetic. Almost all people are raised to have at least some
compassion for others and each of these characters managed to miss that lesson. The storyline
gives such contrasting static characters that it would be hard for anyone to not look nice in
comparison. As a result, the main characters appear to be the very picture of principled people.
This method is not valid or very convincing because it is so transparent.
This appeal to the audience’s values is also meant to contribute to the credibility of the
main characters. The better the main characters seem, the more likeably they are to the audience
which makes them more likely to watch the show. Izzie and Cristina’s illegal autopsy eventually
ends up alright and the daughter eventually realizes she was unfair to her father. Not only does
their wildly illegal autopsy magically work out, this can be extended to imply that Izzie and
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Cristina are responsible for making the daughter see the error of her ways. After this incident,
both characters appear upstanding, but Cristina’s personal life weakens this assumption. The
episode implies that Cristina is pregnant with Preston’s baby, but has no intentions of tell him
about her pregnancy. Even while the show is building up the upstanding qualities of the
characters, their actions go against this reputation. Yet, the audience still sympathizes with the
characters because of the credibility that they are doctors, so it justifies their actions. Because the
perceived reputation do not follow the actions of the characters, this appeal is not convincing or
valid.
The emotions Grey’s Anatomy mainly appeals to are feelings associated with
relationships. Fear of being betrayed, uncertainty about the feelings of the other, inadequacy, and
being ignored are all situations and emotions the audience can relate to. And for the episode’s
theme, many of the relationships have lies in them. The show’s sex appeal also plays alongside
the emotional appeal. Meredith’s relationship plays on emotions about of betrayal. At the
beginning, she tells her boyfriend Derek that she wants to know more about him if she’ll be
sleeping with him every night. At the end of the show, she finds out he is still married. Georgie is
made fun of throughout the episode because of his lack of level-headedness around sexual
subjects as well as his lack of experience.
The emotional appeals along with the sex appeals reinforce each other and are meant to
play on the audiences emotions and manipulate their fears of inadequacy. The audience also
becomes emotionally invested into the characters because they seem relatable. All these elements
are meant to make the audience to feel they are living vicariously through the characters. The
show’s writers put the characters through unusual experiences dealing with sex and emotions to
show the audience they are missing out on something in life. The audience sympathizes with the
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characters and their troubled relationships because they are all realistic and reasonable worries.
The characters harassing Georgie throughout the show particularly runs these ideas home.
Georgie is made fun of for his sexual inadequacies and he shows defensive behavior. The
audience relates to the ridicule and feels empathetic to Georgie. The music plays an important
role here. During these scenes, the same light, mischievous, and comical music is played. This
gives the scene a light feeling so the ridicule seems good natured and makes the mocking
acceptable behavior. This whole situation is designed to continue the show’s phony social
standard of sex.
The characters attitude toward STD’s is light and they talk about sex nonchalantly. The
show treats these as attributes that elevate the characters high in the social scale. This is a twisted
perception of social standards and implies that if the audience is not fulfilling this role in life,
Grey’s Anatomy can. In reality, and what I’ve experienced so far in college, these people are
labeled as “sluts.” While this maybe is not the best title, we certainly do not see them as good
people. Putting people like this in the guise of doctor should not eliminate this conclusion.
Masking this fake good trait behind a professional scene and then emotionally relating the
audience to the characters does not make this tactic valid and so not very persuasive.
Nearly all the lines of argument used in Grey’s Anatomy do not work logically. Some of
the actions of the characters go directly against what the lines of argument were trying to build.
The characters as doctors build credibility for their maturity, but they still act in immature ways.
For example, in the episode, there is an outbreak of syphilis amongst the hospital staff. For
starters, as doctors, one would think they could practice safe sex. But on top of this, all the
doctors, interns and nurses have a seminar about how to use a condom. The whole scene looks
straight from a teen movie. Although this in itself is also trying to make the doctors relatable to,
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it works against the other lines of argument. The lady running the seminar does the banana
demonstration and refers to it as a “banana” throughout. The observing doctors giggle like
teenagers. The scene makes the characters extremely inconsistent with the role of a doctor. The
characterization is not genuine and illogical. This along with the made up social standard and
other mentioned inconsistencies makes all of the lines of argument in the show illogical.
Much of the logic in this show at first glance seems solid, but it does not take a deep look
to see that its logic does not hold weight. Grey’s Anatomy attempts to create an illusion of
standards to make the audience feel they are lacking in those specific standards. The appeals to
character especially a role in deceiving the audience. The characters in the Grey’s Anatomy
world seem to fit in perfectly, but if those characters are put in the context of the real world, they
aren’t so believable or as likeable as they seem in the show. Ethically, the show does not
encourage bad actions. In fact, by the end of the episode it did have a moral implication that
acting respectfully and compassionately should be everyone’s goals. However, what may be
unethical about the show is how it manipulates the audiences own perceived shortfalls through
created illusions of social standards and then implies how people should react to these standards.
The show is not causing or encouraging harm to anyone, but it is not necessarily promoting the
best behavior either.