The mid-season finale of Grey’s Anatomy premiered last Thursday. As typical for the long running medical drama, the episode once again bestowed life-altering trauma on main character, Meredith Grey. This time, the trauma came in the form of a lightning storm, a storm that will never be forgotten. Meredith, having just informed her colleagues of her decision to leave the show’s setting of Seattle for Boston, was informed mid-surgery that her house was on fire. And then, time stops for a while. A scene of tears and heartbreak flash on the screen as Grey hurries home. Embracing her kids, her sisters Maggie and Amelia, and Maggie’s husband Winston- who all made it out of the house safely- she watches her house burn as a result of a lightning strike. It wasn’t just the house that was burning. It was nineteen season worth of memories. It was the tumor Meredith’s late husband, Derek Shepherd, drew on the bedroom wall. It was Derek’s favorite ferry boat scrub cap and the cell phone that had the last voicemail he ever left on it. It was the dance parties Grey had with her best friend, Cristina Yang and the memories of every single person who lived in that house. But, it wasn’t just traumatic for Grey and her family. I have a tumor painting on my own bedroom wall, I lived in that house. When that house burned to the ground, with it went fans’ favorite scenes of the original interns throwing parties, dancing it out, and getting through life. We all lived in that house. Nineteen seasons of Grey’s has come and gone in a blink of an eye, and many of our favorite characters died or are no longer present on the show. Meredith’s house kept those characters living and nearby. The burning of the house symbolizes the closing chapter of Grey’s Anatomy. The burning of the house is the final piece in the puzzle that leads Meredith out of Seattle. That house was just as much of a main character as Grey herself, and it’s ultimate demise foreshadows the impending finale of the medical drama. Life will go on as it always does for the characters and for the fans, but the void left by dead characters and memories of seasons past will be felt more than a tenfold.
Comments