I swear this will be my last post about Grey's. It's just taken me some time to proper formulate what I wanted to say.
Now, I know that art is a business. You can see it in various degrees through the different media. Novels you don't see it as much but you do see it more in movies. Stories have to be changed for budgetary reasons and blah blah blah. But nowhere do you see it more than in TV. It's like the story becomes secondary to all the demands of the network, actors, budget, etc etc. And this is why I really started to hate Grey's last season. So much was happening and none of it seemed to fit the story they were trying to tell. It just didn't make sense and it made me angry.
And this why I continue to hate Katherine Heigl with a fiery rage that will burn longer than the sun. Now Izzy should have died at the end of season 5. That would have been very satisfying and a much better story than what actually happened. Instead, she comes back to life (since Heigl decided she didn't want to leave Grey's after all) but then gets fired from the hospital once she goes back to work and disappears again (because Heigl wanted to spend more time with her family). Now I have no problem with her wanting to spend time with her family but my problem is that she made them do an incredibly terrible storyline which was absolutely absurd because she couldn't decide if she wanted to stay or to go. The show suffered because of Heigl.
This is my main problem with Grey's in general. I know that art is a business but the trick is to make it not look like one. With Grey's, everyone knows the politics of what is going on so the illusion disappears. You can see that the story is subject to all these other outside forces instead of what would happen organically. Like the disappearance of Erica Hahn. There was never even an explanation of what happened to her or where she went. That isn't good story telling at all!
All I want is a story, not a collection of business decisions.
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You have your facts completely incorrect. The terrible storyline had nothing to do with Heigl. In fact it had been agreed for a very long time in advance that she would take time off to do a movie Life As We Know It. So the crappy Alex / Izzie storyline was actually PLANNED.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime the adoption process which she expected to take several years - went much quicker than planned, and a week before the movie was due to start filming Katherine's daughter Naleigh was adopted. So when she finished the movie and returned back to Grey's (again this was planned) she shot what turned out to be her last episode.
The reason being the adoption of her daughter made her realize she wanted to spend more time with her family. This eventually resulted in her leaving the show after agreeing with ABC in March.
So the storyline was always going to happen as it did. It just a crappy storyline. What was unexpected was that Heigl's last episode turned out to be her last. That was never the intention of the writers.
Okay but what point did the writers plan the Izzie/Alex storyline? James Pickens Jr. told US Weekly in Feb. 2009 that both Katherine Heigl and TR Knight were leaving the show and I doubt he would have said that if she hadn't been talking about it already. I mean, we all knew she was leaving the show it was just a question of when. It was only confirmed in June 2009 that she was staying with the show for the sixth season which is probably when they planned the Izzie/Alex storyline.
ReplyDeleteAnd she had clearly been planning on leaving to pursue her movie "career" anyways so why decide to come back for another season, especially if she were in the middle of the adoption process as well? The whole Izzie storyline would have been much more satisfying if she had actually stayed dead. That's just the better story which is my point that the business of the show often gets in the way of the story.
My other problem with Heigl is that she withdrew her name for the Emmy nominations because the writers supposedly didn't give her enough quality material when actually she had asked for a lighter schedule that season. Her withdrawing her name is one thing but then to say it was all the writers fault is just unfair.
And if the writers had been planning the Izzie/Alex storyline since the very beginning of her cancer, then I must have given them too much credit.