Grey's Area: Why Grey's Anatomy Would Fail in Real Life

Ever since procrastinating schoolwork rejoicing in my free time, I've gone on a bit of a Grey's Anatomy binge. Sure, I'm still hurt that George is gone, but as long as they don't kill off Christina, I'm far from boycotting the show.

However, majoring in how to be a pretentious prick English, my brain can't help but scream over the inconsistencies and the "this would never happen in life" moments. Don't get me wrong, I adore this show. It taught me that "clear!" meant something other than what you say when you fucked up on an Etch-a-Sketch. But there's just something about the long, melodramatic moments that are just...c'mon guys. What surgeon would spend two hours having sex in the on-call room after 30 hours on the job, sans sleep?

And so, I present to you: What happens in Grey's that would result in a "why are you telling me this?" look in actual life:

1) Long speeches about why someone's life sucks.
Not that we're all a bunch of apathetic humans, but I've found that once someone asks what's wrong, the accepted response time is twenty seconds, thirty tops. I mean, even when my to-do list is "think about doing laundry. Cry about how many dirty clothes I have," I tend to check out mentally once someone's rant goes into the minute range. So I can only imagine what a doctor with a full day of surgery would be doing if some intern went on a "I can't get a girl, life is so hard" rampage. Not to mention, these speeches almost always begin and end the exact same way. Sure, this is the way we were taught to write essays in middle school. But if I hear someone say something along the lines of this, totally genuinely, expecting some sort of sympathetic response:

"Yes, Meredith I'm sad. I just watched an entire family die in my OR, with the exception of a poor, lost daughter, who, by the way, you were supposed to make room for, if you weren't too busy with your precious heart surgery. I may or may not be homeless because Owen and I haven't had a legitimate conversation in over a week, I haven't been able to get Dr. Weber to even look at me, and I have a mentor who might just hate my guts and want to humiliate me in front of all her residents. So yes, I'm sad because my career is going straight to hell, I'm sad for my dead patients, I'm sad for me, Mer. I'm human. Humans get sad sometimes."

...I would start counting how many times "sad" was uttered in that speech. This may or may not make me a terrible person.

2) Realizing what someone did by a mere look.
Yes, reading body language is a skill that some people have a great knack for. But the number of times these doctors have waltzed into a room, heard a simple "hello," and realized that so-and-so told what's-her-face that her husband died is a wee bit too psychic. Maybe there's some superhuman surgeon power I'm not aware of, but normally, you need a little more context before you can read what a person has done, or what they are feeling.

3) Working for 30 hours straight, then waking up looking like a supermodel.
This is the point I'm most lax about. Yes, this is prime time television. As a general rule, we enjoy watching beautiful people have not-so-beautiful fights. But every single major actor in this show is drop dead gorgeous. Not only that, but they make it a point of how beautiful they are. Last time you checked, how many McDreamys and McSteamys did you see waltzing around a hospital?

This is where I give Scrubs the upper hand. Once Eliot Reid decided that she was a "whole new person" who wore a crapload of eyeliner and blow-dried her hair, the writers showed us how miserable it was getting up at 3:00 in the morning for the sole purpose of looking like a rock star doctor.

As a side note, April Kepner would not last two seconds as chief anything. But that's a whole other blog unto itself.

Namaste.