I wonder what the rest of the actors think on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Every week they run around in scrubs and face shields pumping chests, removing organs, crying, shouting, kvetching.
Meantime, Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith, lies on a gurney and says nothing. Or she’s on a beach in a $1000 sweater, flirting with Patrick Dempsey, who plays her dead husband, or other characters Shonda Rhimes shoved overboard for one reason or another.
Last night, there was no beach, just gurney, as Meredith lay comatose in the longest COVID sleep known to man. Pompeo must be in some wild contract negotiations. The show is clearly setting itself up to go forward next fall without her. If Pompeo does finally sign on the dotted line, Meredith will have to be in a rehab center. It’s all very peculiar.
I toggled between “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Law & Order SVU,” but mostly to see Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, who are sisters in real life, in the episode. It was disappointing in the end. They did not share a scene. Also, Phylicia Rashad, one of our best actresses, was relegated to giving a stirring speech lying in bed wearing a surgical mask. This was pretty insulting to the actress and to the audience. And still she made that speech work!
“SVU,” meantime, was very dark, and too hard to watch all the way through. I skipped “Organized Crime” because it’s really all about Dylan McDermott as a non-Italian Italian mobster named Sinatra. DIck Wolf said last week “Organized Crime” is not about “ripped from the headlines” but a mob cat and mouse show. I don’t think that’s going to work.
Over on “Rebel,” at 10pm on ABC, Katy Sagal plays Erin Brockovich in the TV version of the famed movie. For some reason last night Mary McDonnell, an Oscar winner and just recently star of her own TV series, “Major Crimes,” turned up in small role looking like Katy’s grandmother. They are a year apart in age. McDonnell should sue ABC and “Rebel.” She didn’t deserve that. In “Dances with Wolves,” McDonnell played a character called “Stands with Fists.” She should have punched these people in the make up room.
I’m wondering if McDonnell and Rashad took their gigs to meet their SAG health insurance minimums for the year. If that’s the case, Gabrielle Carteris has a lot to answer for.
Good news! Meredith is back on the beach next week in a creamy cable knit sweater. The other doctors are stopping a typhoon or something from swallowing Seattle.
