I started watching Grey's Anatomy on hulu awhile back, but hulu only offered the first season. Now I have netflix, so I can watch the rest of it. And I have been. Not tons. But a few episodes every now and then.
It's OK. Not great, but OK.
So why do I waste my time on something that's merely OK? Three things: Scenery. Art. Psychology of Human Nature.
Having grown up in the Puget Sound area, I like seeing the Space Needle and other Seattle scenes. It makes me all mushy inside when those panoramas flow past the screen.
I also like the artistic angle of how the show is put together. There are facets of the production that appeal to my emotions like good art does. It hits me deep down inside. Like the music. I'm not a music person. I mean, I can't name all different kinds of musical genres and bands and instruments. But I almost always notice the music in this show. I like how the producers combine the music and the weather and the moods of the characters.
And I like the glimpse into hidden parts of human nature. The portrayal of humanity. How do the patients deal with their crises? How do they deal with their families during crises? How do the doctors deal with the patients? How do they deal with each other? And in what ways do the issues the patients deal with help the doctors, at a basic human level, to be better people?
And yes, I know it's not a Christian show. I realize that the solutions and answers to which all these issues lead are not foundationally the same as the solutions and answers to which I'd come myself, or toward which I'd advise a friend.
The writers do, however, seem to capture little nuggets of interpersonal truth at some level. They get it. They see how we broken human beings interact. How we feel and cope. How we use and manipulate. How we analyze and muddle.
It's kind of strange to me that through this artistic medium we call television, the writers and producers of this show capture life truths and reflect them back to viewers. They give us an opportunity, impetus, to think about our own lives and interactions. To examine our own interpersonal mechanisms to see how we measure up.
Last night's episode was called Enough is Enough. It's in Season Two somewhere toward the beginning. There was a character, a patient, who had ingested doll heads. Ten Judy Doll heads. Judy Dolls are apparently similar to Barbie dolls. Ten. He swallowed the heads whole. Very strange.
I did a little search to see what Judy Dolls were. But in the process of trying to find that out, I noticed that most of the google search hits about Judy Dolls have to do with this particular episode of Grey's Anatomy.
So see, I'm not the only one to whom this show does something. A cursory glance through the search hits showed me that others viewers write about the characters and their various psychoses. People think about the episodes and turn them over in their brains. If a person is so inclined, he or she might put to paper the thoughts and feelings elicited through such analysis. Viewers emotionally ingest the episodes, the various issues and hurdles the characters face. They apply such to their own lives and come to some sort of resolution. And then they spit these thoughts and lessons back out in written analysis. It's in interesting cultural phenomenon, is it not?
I happened upon the following blog post last night. I like it. I like the Christian solution to which this writer alludes. She doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. But I understand her use of some cultural thing, a television character with emotional trauma, as a metaphor for life.
I get it.
And so I'm passing it on. Nothing big or earth shattering. I just like it.
Why do we eat Judy Dolls? on If Words Were Medicine blog.
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