grey’s anatomy

what is so “chick (-flick)” about grey’s anatomy?
is it the focus on emotion in the “hardcore, scientific” (read btwn the lines: masculine) realm of being doctor?
i’m not talking about folks who don’t like the show because they just don’t enjoy doctors/medicine or something, but folks who complain about it being “too fluffy” or that it’s a “chick’s show.” or they prefer the more “hardcore,” aka masculine, House.
there are a lot of loaded, gendered (and race related) connotations in those complaints.
grey’s anatomy is a little like the law & order: svu of medical dramas. most crime dramas, like medical dramas, revolve around the scientific side of the profession (solving the “crime” or exploring the illness). and of course, like all successful tv shows, there has to be a scattering of humanity throughout, a hint of a fleshed out character. but to spend time fully demonstrate the characters’ dimensionality, including the range of emotions they might have during “hardcore” times, shows have to “spin-off.” to go from a law&order to a svu.

but while svu garnered respect for its different focus, grey’s only garnered disdain. to me, the difference in reception is about which characters get to be “emotional.” in svu, the victims get more play and the storylines are in general more about them or the experience of the crime. but the detectives still have to fit the normative, gendered “yin-yang” ideology and it has to be angry, male detective vs sensitive, empathetic female detective. of course, svu broke a lot of the mold on that front, but the basics are still the same. both lead detectives are also white. and fin tutuola, a black detective on the show, has a lot of unfleshed out “race packaging,” as in the racialized (but unexplored) trimmings that shows often use to add dimension to characters of color. he’s originally from the “narcotics” unit where he spent a lot of time dealing with gang activity and he’s a republican. the latter felt to me like a “surprise! a black republican” moment, than anything that had real substance. so from that episode on, fin spends a lot of time “being” a black republican, but not too much time exploring/really engaging black republicanism.

in grey’s, the doctors AND the patients spend a lot of time exploring the emotional implications of their roles. male doctors are sometimes more empathetic than their female counterparts, both of which i’ve heard a lot of disdain for. why is it a problem that dr. shepard is a top neurosurgeon who has a great bedside manner or that dr. yang has not traditionally empathetic? from my experience, they get a disproportionate amount of gendered haterade for those characteristics. the doctor’s on grey’s anatomy spend as much time struggling with the emotional baggage of being a doctor as with the medical aspects, which i think is how doctors should be. that is actually how all emotionally healthy people should be. and it is exceptional that the storylines highlight both struggles, where being a good doctor meshes with being a good (or at least emotionally healthy) person and they don’t cancel each other out. there is nothing “feminine” about that. it’s also because of this that grey’s is able to really subvert some of those common racialized trimmings that svu struggles with. instead of “dr. yang is asian overachiever,” akin to “det. tutuola is a black republican,” dr. yang is a woman who watched her father die in front of her as a child and is still struggling with the helplessness that that brought on. and so she does everything she can to gain back feelings of agency, especially by being the best. that is a real, human three-dimensional spin on the characteristic of being an overachiever.

on a similar note, how great is it that dr. torres is a queer woman of color and that those parts of her identity are really unpacked? queer relationships, especially for queer people of color, have such a flatness to them on tv most of the time (ex. heroes and the l word). the model for queer people of color has usually been invisibility, or this flat “race versus sexuality” thing (need i say carmen on the l word?). while carmen and dr. torres both have “i’m latina,” “i’m queer,” “my family is not necessarily accepting,” carmen’s storyline takes those aspects and mushes them into something incredibly formulaic: “i’m queer” but “my (big, ol’ stereotypical mexican) family is not necessarily accepting” because “i’m latina” boring! been there done that. for dr. torres, it’s difficult put push all of those factors into a formula. her latina and queer identities are not incidental, nor are they one “versus” the other for her. and her struggles with her father have a lot to do with his catholicism too, but not only. in fact, dr. torres almost falls into that “my father is a catholic, latino homophobe” black and white mentality, but her significant other, who has some queer life experience under her belt, reminds her that her father is struggling with a huge shift in the way he perceives his daughter. and that takes time to adjust to. how human. how much more interesting than “my father is a (2-dimensional) catholic, latino homophobe.”

so if it is so clear that the full exploration of the human range of emotion fully fleshes a character out and makes room for better explorations of identity, why is there still such a societal (ch-)”ick” on that regard? why can’t sensitive, emotional, male, and doctor all fit within one person? or queer, latina, and doctor? folks like this exist in real life, so what does it mean that we can’t even deal with them on tv? what is so wrong with a commitment to mental wellness in the high-stress, emotional job of being a doctor (or a police detective)?