Is Grey's Anatomy any good?

I caught up on some television today while sweating off a hangover from last night's bash at tinafizz's. I am several months behind; episodes build up in the TV directory of my server, waiting for my Xbox to order them up like hearts when you're holding all red AKQJJ.

I couldn't decide if I was in the mood for Veronica Mars, Law & Order, Alias, The Office, Arrested Development, Numb3rs, or any of the other myriad programs I download weekly due to the cable company's piss-poor DVR being a piece of crap. So I decided to catch the last three of Grey's Anatomy, and pondered whether or not I think it's a good television program.

A TV show, like any narrative, is held up to scrutiny along two lines of cognition: Narrative coherence and narrative fidelity. Narrative coherence refers to whether the story "holds together" and makes sense in the world. Do the characters behave in rational, or if not rational, realistic manners? Do computers/hacking really work the way represented in the story? (That's a big stumbling block for me, and after watching a woman on Numb3rs WAVE A MAGNETIC WAND over a broken hard drive platter, extracting a .jpg in the process, I might have to stop watching the show.) Narrative fidelity is the nature by which the story "rings true," or reflects our own life experiences. Can we identify with the characters, and see our own thoughts and emotions in theirs?

It's in this analysis that I have to bring up the question posed in today's subject line. A more pragmatic person might simply ask, "Do you watch the show?" to which I'd obviously answer "Yes" and thus it must be "good" because I don't, as a rational human being, watch bad television. (The pragmatist does not realize I voluntarily watch The Biggest Loser and even those late night commercials for the loathed Girls Gone Wild. Perhaps we need to reconsider the concept of rationality.)

Anyway, let's look at the show through the first dimension, narrative coherence.

The vast majority of the program (at least in this, its first full season) has dealt with the complexity of the sexual relationships occurring amongst the show's characters, who essentially are banging each other with regularity. They are all phenomenally attractive human beings, easily engaging with each other but with the expected results. Even the "lovable loser" cliche of George O'Malley is cute. It's not ER by any means; while the medical situations due move the plot occasionally, this show is about the relationships amongst the characters -- and nearly the entire show takes place inside the hospital where they're surgical interns.

Narrative coherence would mean I would have to buy into the idea that people placed into this situation would inevitably end up screwing each other. I've been working full-time as a professional for seven years now. While I work in the field diametrically-opposed (in terms of intensity of work) to medicine, I can't say I've observed co-workers going at it with such fervor and passion. Maybe I'm blind; maybe I don't get the invites to those parties. Most importantly, the utterly single nature of each character is particularly out-of-line with my observations of the world. I don't buy that all these gorgeous doctors emerged from med school without a one of them being in a serious relationship. (Then again, I dated a med student a while, and knowing the life she lived, perhaps it's not that absurd after all.)

Regardless, this is either a commentary on the lack of narrative coherence for Grey's Anatomy or on the lack of my having ever been on the "Everybody's Having Lots Of Sex" train.

As for fidelity, I think the show comes through a bit better. A recent episode dealt with the boons and banes of solitude; the reactions to which amongst the characters I certainly found reflective of the way I see things. There's a spectrum line upon which lies the dot that represents our comfort with being alone. At one end we have the Ted Kaczinskis of the world, and at the other, the hypersocial. While the show in its first season focused closely on the title character, the second season has been fairly even-handed in taking a more omniscient perspective (making Meredith Grey's occasional voiceovers a bit of a paradox, but anyway). It's been to the benefit of O'Malley, ever-longing after Meredith -- the only girl for whom he wears a heart on his sleeve, but obscured by the black armband of self-doubt. Even Alex -- the future cosmetic surgeon and embodiment of the cold, heartless surgical cliche -- suffers his first major mistake in the manner you or I would: with anguish and dejection.

I've always wondered why programs about the most exclusive and least-identifiable occupations (medicine, law, politics) are the most popular on television. It would seem that to create narrative fidelity, writers are challenged further to make these very unique characters behave in the manner a common viewer would, with the same goals, hopes, and aspirations. Of course, dramatic programs about more commonplace situations occasionally succeed; Boston Public, Six Feet Under, Joan of Arcadia (ignoring the metaphysical dimension), and others. Alas, most "everyday American" programs are relegated to the half-hour sitcom format, where they flourish.

Some critics respond to this by saying, "If people wanted to watch dramatic television about their lives, they wouldn't have to watch television. They could just watch life." In her book on Irish television drama, Helena Sheehan of Dublin City University says the key to good writing for a TV drama is the same as good writing in any narrative: evocation. Viewers don't need to identify with a television character's occupation, living situation, or degree of wealth; they simply need to have emotions that they recognize evoked by the story. In that, I have to question whether or not we (the people in my academic genre) have been privileging autoethnography to a degree. I'm not entirely sold, anymore, that autoethnography is any better than fiction writing; nay, I don't even know if it's even different. So should I abandon autoethnography and go into fiction writing? (Television writing?) I don't know if I'm that creative. I'd like to think I am. What I know is this: I'm not reading autoethnographies and yelling, "What an asshole!" I'm not reading autoethnographies and writing about them here. I *am*, however, reading autoethnographies and saying, "I hope I'm never this self-involved and pretentious."

I think we all need to watch more, not less, television. We just need to be more conscientious of what we're getting out of it.