Grey's Anatomy ~ Such a Disappointment

When ER was in its heydey, a friend of mine whose husband suffers from multiple and major illnesses said that it was unbearable to watch.

I'm still watching Grey's, but I'm about finished.

Today, out for breakfast with a friend who has sustained some major hits of her own, I verbalized my feelings for the first time and found that she had already had all the same thoughts.

All having to do with the first episode of the season and George's death.

First, the FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF, intoned in a solemn voiceover by Meredith at the beginning of the episode and used to frame it as a nice little package. Make your way consecutively through each stage, check it off as you finish, and voila! -- you have done your grief work and can return to prime time. It takes something like 42 minutes.

Second, the scene between George's mother and the new doc, who had some very nice things to say about George and left Mom beaming, all resolved and grateful. I think we all know that in real life she would have collapsed, sobbing, into his arms, and gone home to stare out the window for many days and months ahead. Maybe years.

Third, the subsequent episodes. Big merger in the works, people losing jobs, Callie applying for a job in Cleveland, Izzie's hair growing back -- everyone all done with the grief thing.

I'm not saying that the show should have turned into a morgue. But we're talking about their colleague of all these years, Izzie's best friend, Callie's ex-husband, Lexie's ex-crush, Meredith's ex-one night stand and, of course, his mother's son . . . Hello? Not a word? No one having a little meltdown at an inappropriate time in an inappropriate place?

I have sadly concluded that my once favorite show is completely idiotic.

Hallelujah

I was surprised, I admit it, by the positive response to yesterday's post. The lyrics to Hallelujah are disturbing, regardless of which version you're talking about. (One website says there are 15 verses in total, appearing in various recordings.)

I think I first heard Hallelujah at the end of the season finale of the third season of West Wing. C.J. Cregg, the White House press secretary, and Simon Donovan, the secret service agent assigned to her in the wake of a series of threats, have fallen in love; to their mutual astonishment and relief, the perpetrator has been arrested, meaning that they are finally free to pursue their relationship. The President is attending a theatrical production in New York, from which he withdraws to discuss with Leo the decision he is making to assasinate a foreign leader. And presidential advisor Josh Lyman is arguing with his girlfriend, women's rights activist Amy Gardner, who has just lost her job due to White House machinations.

The clip below opens with Simon's murder. It's quick and it's violent, but I'm going with this version because the speed and power of the violence reflect the experience of sudden and startling death so well. The important part for me, though, lies in about 1:00-2:45. I've always been very fond of the character of C.J. Cregg, who is tall and elegant (I wish) and whose last name sounds exactly like mine (even though it's spelled differently), but in these scenes, with her response to the news of Simon's death and the images of the investigative scene where she is not present, there are mirrors to my own life that go far beyond the elusive personal qualities and last name. Our son did not die from a gunshot wound, but almost all suicide deaths involve police investigations of the scene and body, and almost all sudden deaths involve notifications to loved ones who are plunged into a state of numbed shock before the first spoken sentence is complete.

And the song? Some of the lyrics are a mystery to me, some are overtly sexual, and all of them blend the human longing for others and for God that becomes so potent in times of bewilderment and loss. I hear so many voices in this song, layering over one another through a phrase here, a verse there: the voices of David and Bathsheba, of Samson and Delilah, of men and the women they love, of women and the men they love, of brothers and sisters who love one another, of mothers and fathers and the sons and daughters they love. To me it's a song of lament for a time when loss and love crash against one another in a sudden and violent cataclysm of destruction. "And love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah" ~ the words could be Zosima's in The Brothers Karamasov, which I've quoted repeatedly in the past year. "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing in real life as opposed to love in dreams."