"Grey's Anatomy" Review: Something's Just Not Right

If you’ve even just walked past a newsstand in the last few months, you know who dies in the premiere of “Grey’s Anatomy” tomorrow night, so I’m not really telling you anything that’s not already out there.

But if you don’t want to know, stop reading now…

The first hour of the two-hour premiere (which is all ABC provided to the media) begins right where last season’s finale left off, with both George and Izzie coding. But only Izzie wakes up as George passes away…

The rest of the hour shows the other characters trying to deal with his passing while also trying to continue saving lives at the hospital. Plus, the chief must deal with trouble from the hospital board.

I was completely expecting a big tearjerker, but it never happened. Instead, the hour came off as totally choppy and disjointed. I thought that most of the attempts at injecting humor fell completely flat—especially some of the inappropriate comments from Sloan. I appreciate the writers trying not to weigh us down with too much mourning, but discussing George’s sexual prowess is really not the way to do it.

I’m not a regular viewer of “Grey’s,” so maybe I just don’t understand the characters and their rhythms. But everything just seemed off and I really didn’t think that George, or T.R. Knight, really got the goodbye he deserved (Of course, Knight not agreeing to come back for any episodes really didn’t help that any.).

The two medical cases in the episode also seemed a little off—with one of them being completely pointless other than to give Arizona something to do since she didn’t really know George, and to give Chief Webber something else to yell about. And I understand that people handle grief in different ways, but the way the writers have Callie handle it by taking things out on the Chief was really weak…

Killing a major character is a really difficult thing for a show to do, and unfortunately “Grey’s” doesn’t get it quite right. But there’s no reason to think this isn’t just a bump in the road and that the show will get back to normal in an episode or two…

Otherwise, it might be a long hard season for “Grey’s” fans…

“Grey’s Anatomy” premieres Thursday, September 24th with back-to-back episodes beginning at 9 p.m. on ABC…

Photo Credit: Michael Desmond/ABC