If you were trying to plumb ''Grey's Anatomy" for deeper meanings, you'd be X-raying the wrong patient. This is a show whose title is a bad pun on a classic textbook, a show that does away with hospital ethics if they get in the way of a juicy kiss or one of Meredith Grey's armchair truisms about herself. This is a show that puts the ''me" back in medical, complete with unrepentantly self-absorbed characters and a willingness to ignore a bomb squadder's death to focus on Meredith's beloved existential angst.
''Grey's Anatomy" is shamelessly short on altruism.
And yet that's why so many of us have fallen for creator Shonda Rhimes's series since it debuted as a midseason replacement last March. Simply put, the ABC hit is not a guilt trip. It's not a lofty portrait of medical heroics, it's not a lesson in health-insurance issues, it's not sanctimonious or preachy.
Most hourlong hospital series are populated with doctors out to rid the world of suffering, from the Dr. Marcus Welbys of classic TV to the more flawed but no less humanitarian likes of Drs. Carter and Greene on ''ER." But Meredith, Cristina, George, Izzie, and the rest of the Seattle Grace healers of ''Grey's Anatomy" are far from noble. Indeed, they're more motivated by competition, praise, and sex than by magnanimity. Who wouldn't bet on the unsentimental, fiercely ambitious Cristina (Sandra Oh) if she were cast in ''Survivor: Hospital"? And yet she is not made into a villain in the ''Grey's Anatomy" universe; she's just another intern with a complicated social life. (Indeed, the series' original title was ''Complications.") Cristina's jealousies and emotional limitations, which Oh makes both comic and believable, are merely self-indulgent and human.
Think of it this way: Last week, Izzie (Katherine Heigl) and heart patient Denny segued from flirtation to hugging on ''Grey's Anatomy," while Carter and Pratt were saving lives in Darfur on ''ER."
