Grey's Anatomy (Season 1)

Starring: Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, T.R. Knight, Chandra Wilson, James Pickens, Jr, Isaiah Washington, Patrick Dempsey

Creator: Shonda Rhimes

Genre: Medical Drama, Serial Drama
Rating: B+

While not my favourite season of Grey’s Anatomy this also wasn’t my least favourite season.  Season one is about the relationships that the new interns of Seattle Grace Hospital are building.  Series protagonist Meredith Grey (Pompeo) sleeps with a stranger the night before her first day as an intern at Seattle Grace; the next day she discovers that her mystery man is none other than Derek Shepherd (Dempsey), a new attending at the hospital.  While Meredith is eager to put the affair behind them, leaving it as a forgotten one-night stand, Derek is eager to pursue it, despite it being against the rules.  Creating more drama are Meredith’s fellow interns; hardass Christina Yang (Oh), jerk Alex Karev (Chambers), former model Izzie Stevens (Heigl), and the insecure George O’Malley (Knight); the latter two become Meredith’s roommates early on in the season.  The cast is rounded off by the interns’ mentor resident Miranda Bailey (Wilson) a hardass known as “the Nazi,” attending Preston Burke (Washington), and Chief of Surgery Richard Webber (Pickens).

The basic overlaying plot of the first season is the relationship between Meredith and Derek and the way that the interns adjust to their new lives.  There are also, however, more secondary plots; the relationship between Christina and Burke (which is far more successful, and secretive, than the Mer/Der one), George’s crush on Meredith, and Meredith’s mother’s Alzheimer’s being the most prominent ones.

At this stage in the game, none of these plots are really all that strong on their own – beyond the two romances.  The thing that makes this season really remarkable is the way in which it sets the stage for a lot of things that happen in later seasons.  There’s Alzheimer’s, unplanned pregnancies, Alex being a douche, there’s sex in the on call room.  Having watched the series all the way through to the most current season it’s actually really easy to look back at Season 1 and see a lot of foreshadowing for what happens later – sure, some of the events that happened weren’t planned in advance, but the show definitely gives you a feeling that Shonda Rhimes has been plotting some of the major stuff for a long time now.  The individual episodes in general aren’t always all that great, but I do have to say I love how the entire season seemed to be setting up Meredith for the big reveal at the end; it’s almost like everything, from the first scene, was planned for that one crucial last season.

One thing that I do have to say about Season 1 is just how many reoccurring themes of the show were present here that have since been lost.  There’s the McDreamy, which we hardly hear anymore, and the “seriously”s, the sex in the on call room, and “the Nazi”.  Some of the characters that were in this season are no longer in the show, and others have had their roles rather reduced – while others have had theirs increased.  A lot of what I miss about the early seasons of Greys is the patients; as time has proceeded and our interns have grown things seem to be more about the doctors’ personal lives than the actual medicine.  There aren’t as many patients anymore, and the ones that they have aren’t as varied or as astounding.  You also don’t see the nurses anymore, which I think is a bit of a loss to the show.