Lots of folks have been writing about how great Grey's is this season. Overall, I tend to agree that the aftermath of Grey's "9/11" has given the writers lots of new directions to explore. But the ugly specter of one of those new directions reared its charming head in the last episode, "Something's Gotta Give." After watching the epi and connecting the potential future dots of where it may lead, I'd prefer to rename it - Something's Gotta Go.
What's gotta go? The specter of Sunshine's Scariest Circle that the writers left dangling in the deviant little brains of some of Grey's longtime fans, like yours truly. After all, all of the Grey's faithful know that Sunshine likes to draw circles. She'll show the characters (and us) the other side of some coin by completing an old circle (that viewers didn't realize was incomplete). Knowing Sunshine's obsession with circles is both a blessing and a curse for fans who get drawn into being armchair quarterbacks. Lots of those fans are people like me - writers. It's impossible to keep your mind from writing possible future epis based on what you know of the characters, the show and its creator. The specter of the possible completion of the circle Sunshine just dangled over our heads is definitely more curse than blessing. Or perhaps, it's all curse and no blessing.
The first line of the circle looks innocuous enough. It even looks charming and natural. Cristina saved Derek's life, didn't she? And saving him messed her up and screwed up Meredith and Cristina's friendship. Now everyone is trying to push Cristina back to a place she's afraid to go. And Derek's having a case of convenient memory where he thinks he was once in that place and pushing didn't get him back to the OR. (He remembers that after Mer pushed him once he ended up batting away her ring. He's forgotten that she came back, pushed him again, and he begged her to say she'd love him even if he wasn't a surgeon. She said she couldn't love him if he was able to save Izzie but just let her die. And then Derek went back to the OR. I'd say the pushing worked.)
But Derek remembers it all differently and he feels a new bond with Cristina and he's decided he's gonna be her hero. She's pushing Meredith away and Owen is gonna handle it all wrong. Owen's letting the gang plan an intervention at the housewarming party. And Derek thinks it won't work and he believes he knows best. His intentions are good, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with, now don't we?
So we end the episode with Derek the hero at his McDreamy finest. He's sitting on the roof at a table with Cristina after getting her out of the apartment before her hubby and friends could get there to "intervene." And they're discussing decorating because Cristina has a new place to decorate and Der and Mer are building and decorating a house. Cristina wants to talk about flooring so they're discussing flooring. A little wine, a moonlit night, a man who likes to save women and a woman who needs to be saved. What could be wrong with that?
It's one of those new paths for our old friends, right? After all, that's why Sunshine tore everything down - so that she could start it all over in new directions that made sense because people had changed. The person who changed the most is surely Cristina. She's gone from a Superwoman surgeon to a savvy, smart, pretty little lady entering a brand new world with a lot of old baggage. And good ole' McDreamy has a weakness for little ladies just like her. Yep, the new Cristina looks a lot like the old Meredith.
Derek would never be unfaithful to Meredith - unless he stumbled into it by accident and justified it as part of the debt he owed to Cristina. Cristina might be unfaithful to Owen, since her quickie marriage seemed to be more about giving her something to be instead of a surgeon than about any real desire to build a life with him. The old Cristina would never hurt Meredith on purpose like this - but the new one might because misery really does love company. Meredith wouldn't be so okay then, would she? Even then, it's more of a thing that Cristina would fall into by accident, but she'd justify it to herself as a way that Meredith wouldn't be "so okay" anymore.
The scariest part of a potential Derek/Cristina one night stand - or even a brief fling - is that it would complete the circle that started the show. Der never understood how his wife could betray him with his best friend Mark. That fling set off the events that started the series with Der waking up in Mer's bed the night after he picked her up at a bar. From the kernel of that fling between Addison and Mark grows all of Grey's Anatomy.
It's got to be a mighty tempting prospect for a creator who loves a good circle. Completing this one as the clock ticks down to the end of Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey's contracts has got to be a big lure for Sunshine. And think about the symmetry. Addison said her affair with Mark came to be because Derek was never there for her because he was always at the hospital. Meredith hasn't been there for Cristina because Cristina pushed her away - but she's done that because it offends Cristina that Mer is okay and she's not. And why did Mark have the affair with Addison? Well, okay, Mark's a big old hound from way back. Other than his natural "Mark-ness," want to bet it started with him comforting a friend?
Mer's already shown signs of being too busy with the hospital and too busy mothering everyone for Derek. That supply closet scene with Derek on the prowl and Meredith pushing him away set off real alarm bells for me.
Even a one night stand between Derek and Cristina would shake the hospital to its foundations. It would affect nearly every single character and put Derek in a position where he'd understand exactly how his best friend Mark came to sleep with his wife Addison. It would likely send Derek to cross over to Private Practice for a heart to heart with his ex and would lead to a lot of heart to hearts with Mark. It would put Derek back where he started at the beginning - having to win Meredith all over again.
The affair would leave Cristina to confront her marriage and would put Owen and Teddy back in each other's lives. Could Cristina mend things with Meredith - or might it put her in a position of having to make a new best friend? Why, there's Little Grey and that new friendship would be a foundation for a post Mer/Der Grey's, now wouldn't it?
I can see Mer fighting to stay at the hospital, and being hot/cold at Derek's efforts to win her back. We'd be almost back at the beginning again - with elevators and supply closets and frantic snatched moments that passed too quickly. You know what else I can see? That Mer would find that the only solution for her to get her life back would be to do it somewhere else.
I can see that the completion of the circle would fit nicely with the end of Pompeo and Dempsey's contracts. Mer might pull a Derek and just walk away from it all, leaving him to pull an Addison and just show up, demanding his marriage back. Or Mer might say to Der that she was willing to try again but that she couldn't do it in Seattle. Then they'd fly away together for a new beginning. That scenario would work either as the absolute end of the show, or as a new beginning that left behind the Cristina/Little Grey friendship and the Cristina/Owen/Teddy mess and the Little Grey/Mark/Alex mess as the foundation for the show to build upon without the main characters.
I can see the circle and I can see the symmetry of it all. I can even imagine that creating the new circle might have been the real reason Shonda staged the showdown to change it all up. It could've been Shonda setting the stage for the biggest circle of them all.
Although it would doubtlessly be fine entertainment, emotionally I think it would be the wrong move for Grey's fans. We don't want to live through a McDreamy becoming a McBastard. We don't want to see Cristina lose herself so much that she'd betray a friend. Heck, most of us just want the old Cristina back as quickly as possible. Completing the circle with a Der/Tina fling would be an ultimate act of betrayal to the Grey's fans.
Yet I can imagine that to the creator of this world on the kernel of Der fleeing the Addison/Mark affair, that the prospect of this circle would be mighty, mighty tempting. That's why I find the prospect of this circle to be the scariest of them all.
Do you think we could interest Shonda Sunshine in squares or triangles? Circles are just too damned scary.
Excellent point. I've also never heard anyone tell Der that Mer asked the gunman to shoot her. If he knows how big a role his wife played in saving his life, he's not showing it.
Like you noted, Der hasn't been showing much concern for Mer lately at all. Just because Mer's been strong, doesn't mean she's invincible!