Disarm/Grey Matter

Krista Vernoff on "Disarm"...

Original Airdate: 1-6-11

I was really worried as we were breaking this story in the writer’s room that there wasn’t any room for levity in an episode about a bunch of college kids getting shot up – an episode that was designed to be the end of a 13 episode arc that began with ep. 623 last season. Bringing our cast of characters full circle from their trauma is no small task – but we felt like it was time to finally move past the shooting, to let them heal, to turn the page. And we thought, what better way to do that than to have our people save the lives of the next generation of gunshot victims. But, again, there was the problem of finding levity. Which could also be called Defying Gravity, a song with which my 3 year old has recently become obsessed – but I digress. The levity came when someone had the idea of the Alex/Stark OR stand-off. We laughed our asses off while we ran around the room acting out Alex’s wrestler stance, “I’m ALL STATE, BABY!” And I have to say, Justin Chambers and Peter MacNicol delivered in spades. I was on the set for the shooting of the scene, and in the early rehearsals they were actually wrestling which was hilarious, but, we decided, unlikely. Often, we the writers are at odds with the medical personnel who work so hard to make our show look, feel and sound like a real hospital. Wrestling in the OR, as hard as it made us laugh, was not a thing we thought we’d get by them. The other thing they really struggled with was the idea of a MASH unit in the hospital. But they rose to the occasion and only hated us a little more than usual as we passionately shouted, “No, we don’t care if people would just be shipped to other hospitals! Pretend the other hospitals are full! Pretend there was a GIANT earthquake AND a massive shooting ON ONE DAY! Then what would happen???” They humored us and I don’t know about you but I thought the MASH unit was bad-ass. I was sad that because of time limitations we had to cut a really funny scene in which April ran the crap out of that MASH unit, barking orders at Stark and the others, but I loved how it all came off – director Debbie Allan was INCREDIBLE in bringing it to life. I have to keep this short because it’s late and I’m hard at work on upcoming episodes. Thanks, as always, for watching. And Happy New Year!! As they said in Spinal Tap… This one goes to 11! xxoo Krista