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Grey’s & Griffin’s — The Power Of Dirt

This week's Grey's Anatomy was the first after a wee hiatus and it gives a glimpse into where the show is headed down the trail and possibly to the end of its run.  Ellen Pompeo (Meredith) hinted this week that the show would last about 2 more years.  If that's the case, it looks like Shonda Sunshine is heading it back to where it started.  After all, Derek, on the heels of learning that his wife (Addison) had slept with his best friend (Mark), finally accepted Richard's invitation to come to his hospital where Derek would be groomed as Chief.  Except, after Derek got there, Richard's life and marriage disintegrated leaving Richard nothing to hold onto except the power for which he'd traded everything else. 

After years of waiting in the wings, Derek staged a coup and got the job he'd come West to take.   Richard's fall off the wagon might have justified Derek's sneak attack if only McDreamy hadn't traded on inside information from the love of his life to pull it off.  In this episode, Richard sat in a conference room for hours, torn between whether to sign one document that gave up his job and medical license permanently, and another that committed to going into rehab and coming out to resume power.  What had Richard torn was the rehab part - he didn't want to give up drinking b/c it was all he had left.  Finally though, Richard signed and headed to rehab and Derek got ready to take charge.  By the time Richard returns, there may be a battle, but I bet Derek will have learned that power ain't all it's cracked up to be.

What got the little hamsters running around the creaky wheel in my head was Derek's motivational speech to the employees.  He said he was starting with a clean slate.  The big, take charge types think they control the slate.  I'm editing the new one that I'll post soon (when my edit and hubby's cover get finished), and it's called Griffin's Law.  (Think - Grey's Anatomy meets The Paper Chase)  There's a Professor in Griffin's named Grey who like Derek, thinks he runs his slate.   They're both wrong of course.  Worrying about the slate and the state of the slate runs them.  There's no door in life allowing Derek, Grey or any of us to sweep out the dirt. 

The dirt hangs around and the only way to get it off the slate is to sweep it under the rug.  If you do that, you create big bumps and bulges and eventually, no matter how careful you are, you're gonna trip over one of them.  Dirt loses its power if you leave it out in the open and walk over it on your way to the future.  No one's slate is clean because life is dirty.  Women can deal with the dirt, acknowledge the dirt and move on.  Men think they can rule the dirt, can control it by brute force or by fiat of will.  Men think they can say the slate is clean and therefore it is.  Men will be men and they will turn everything into a power play. 

In this episode, all the women let the men hold the slates and think they controlled them.  Take the mighty Christina Yang for example.  Owen felt belittled by Christina "giving" him to Teddy.  So in this epi, Christina let Owen dictate terms and when Teddy paged Yang for a big surgery, Owen told her not to answer the page - and she didn't.  Even the Nazi surrendered her slate.  Bailey set off on a Nazi rant at Dr. Feel Good, the anaesthesiologist, after a patient woke up mid surgery.  But by the end of the epi, Bailey let Feel Good be in on surgery round two and she even explained herself to the man.  On the Mark/Lexi front, McSteamy had moved in a previously unknown and pregnant adult daughter and declared that he and Lexi would raise the girl.  When Lexi rebelled against raising a girl who was about her age and broke up with Mark, he reacted in typical McSteamy fashion by going off to have some rowdy sex with Addison.  And that was just fine and dandy and a thing Lexi was to forgive and forget, but when he found out that Lexi had done the same thing - sleeping with Karev- he made Lexi pay for it for the whole epi.  McSteamy gave Lexi the silent treatment and by the end had her running off an elevator in tears, ceding him the field and giving him his way.

How about the "post it" power couple, my favs, Mer/Der?  In this one, Mer quietly went along with the program, letting Derek play Chief.  She even surrendered her schedule to his, and at the end of the epi we saw the big man hard at work in his office.  The faithful little woman sat across from his desk, reading a magazine. 

I think Shonda Sunshine was setting up a lesson for the men that power and control are as empty and illusory as those clean slates.  If the men want power and the women let them think they have it, then who is really in control?  It's just like the dirt.  The dirt of the past will always be there.  You can sweep it under the rug to give yourself a clean slate and risk tripping over the bumps or bulges. Or you can rearrange the dirt so it's not an obstacle between yourself and your future.

But Derek thinks he wants power and now, he thinks he's got it.  Mer won't play the "little woman" for long because that's not who she is.  Mer won't quietly go to dinners and banquets when she could be in surgery or having a  drink with her friends.  Mer won't stand by silently and let Der discipline her friends for a mistake that most of them have made but didn't get caught for.  In short, Mer will call Der out and so will the board.  Whether or not a "post it" marriage suits the two of them, it won't suit the suits.  I can foresee an epi down the road where the suits decide to overlook some act of Mer's because she's not really Der's wife.  And I can see them putting the question to him, making him want to legalize the union.  THEN I see Mer refusing, not b/c she doesn't want to walk down the aisle with Der, but because she only wants to do it for the right reasons.

In Griffin's Law, my soon to be pubbed book, Grey is a law school professor and Shea is his student.  Grey thinks he has all the power and Shea lets him think so, until he goes too far.  That's the problem with power.  It's a potent cocktail that makes all the lines fuzzy.  Drink too much of it and you become too full of yourself, too convinced that your rules are THE rules. 

I think Derek is gonna drink too much of the me/my juice and spend too much time running around worrying about the state of his slate.  All that dirt under the rug will trip him up and leave him facing a choice that will decide his future, Mer's future and the fate of the hospital.  He came West for power and found love instead.  Power doesn't allow for a union of equals and true love won't allow for anything else.

I see a clash coming that even McDreamy's magic wand won't fix.