I was procrastinating by looking at photos from the season finale of "Grey's Anatomy" because I think I am still recovering from it two days later. So the photos lead me to seek out truth to the rumor I heard that Ellen Pompeo doesn't like her character. I found an interesting interview about that here After reading the interview, I stumbled upon a Grey's Anatomy fan site that had a link to the Nightline interview with certain cast members. I found this one of the single most interesting things I have watched in a long while.
So they're talking about race on TV, specifically about race on Grey's Anatomy. Maybe I'm clueless or maybe my thought processes are different than most people, but I find it funny that I never once looked at the cast and thought "black, white, asian, white, white, black, black." My thought processes were more like this: "oh wow, YES Dr. Burke KEEP taking your clothes off" or "Meredith, tell him off. TELL HIM OFF!" or "If you say "vagina squad" one more time, Alex, I will come through the TV and smack you myself" or "Thank you, I am now adding the term "va-jay-jay" to my everyday vocabulary." Nightline, however, explores the racial aspect of the show, as does Time, but what I love about Shonda Rhimes are her interviews talking about how she wrote the characters as having their own unique flaws and quirks and never as a specific race, ethnicity, etc. I love that! I never really thought about it, I guess maybe because the shows I tend to watch faithfully have a somewhat diverse cast, as in not so glaringly one race (except Most Extreme Challenge where they are all Japanese, hahahahha).
No seriously though. I mean, yeah, Lost is kinda unrealistic in the fact that it looks like the UCLA volleyball team crashed on the beach, but then you kind of look more closely and see that there are unusual characters on there. Yeah, you got a lot of white people but you got some black folks, asian people, a fat man, a latina (ok HAD, she's totally dead) ummmm oh oh! the iraqi dude, a brit addict, a nigerian drugrunner turned priest, etc etc. Oh and NOW Dr. Clue. Frickin Dr. Clue. You even have a biracial couple rocking out. And then there are the reality shows. America's Next Top Model, where half of the girls are white, half are black, asian or like Jade, a biracial butterfly, LOL. And "Everybody Hates Chris" is the FUNNIEST SHOW ON TV RIGHT NOW! WATCH IT! But like I said before, I don't tend to notice these things. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy and think "Oh my God the chief of staff at the hospital is BLACK!" or "Oh my GOD Joanie and Danielle on ANTM are two different races but they're FRIENDS! How shocking!" But apparently people do watch TV with a little internal mental label maker going "black.....asian......white, and BLONDE!..........asian.....black....black.....black....what is with all the black people here??"
I am happy that Shonda Rhimes decided to defy the rules and just write a show. Just write a show where the character's paths were predestined and did not depend on a certain prototype. In the case of Grey's Anatomy you can seriously argue that the show is colorblind in the fact that it was written without "color" so anyone could've landed the roles. Shonda did steer the boat by demanding interesting actors during casting. So interesting. Nightline even called it "revolutionary" or something along those lines. I basically think it's great. But maybe it's cause I try not to be a racist person (ha ha yeah, I know I should've given some white guy a chance, but I'm happy with my black man thank you very much, LOL) the reality of it all is that I watch Grey's Anatomy every week because it's fabulous. The fact that it has given actors the chance to play what is for them an atypical role (Isiah Washington as a surgeon and not a thug, though imagining him cast as a thug is perhaps one of the most ridiculous and hilariously absurd things I've ever heard. Dude, do casters just look at him and go "great, black man, you're a thug" I mean COME ON PEOPLE! He's Dr. Burke! He plays the trumpet! He's ELOQUENT DAMMIT!) but I don't watch it because it's making any sort of statement. No way. I watch it for ten bajillion other reasons. It's got drama, romance, weird medical issues, people with issues, people with more issues, people with serious issues, and SEX. And hey, let's face it, we ALL know it's the biracial sex that really gets me hot anyways, so to Shonda Rhimes and Grey's Anatomy I say "BRING IT, BITCHES."
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