Time Has Come Today/Grey Matter

Shonda Rhimes on “Time Has Come Today” and other things…

Welcome to Season Three!!!

We here at Grey’s are all really excited about the new season and dear God, I hope you are too. I personally was itching to get back to work. I’m not a vacation kind of girl. I’m also clearly not a girl who exists well outside the four walls of Seattle Grace Hospital. I was missing George and the gang. So coming back to work was all about joy. But right now, this minute, today? I’m also kinda nervous.

About Thursday nights.

I wasn’t. I was fine. I didn’t even feel a twinge. Seriously (sorry for the unwarranted usage of “seriously” this early in the season). But --- seriously. I was feeling no pressure, no pain. What a fun job! I love it! I am a stress-free, happy-go-lucky, glass half full freak of nature! I mean, I was. The head of ABC Steve McPherson (seriously, would it surprise you to know that I secretly call him McFee?) was all, “Shonda, we’re moving you to Thursday” and I was all, “Whoo-hoo!” And I got really super excited. Because Thursday? Is a rocking night for television. I did some dances of joy.

Then I woke up this morning and, out of nowhere, found myself FREAKED OUT. Because Thursdays? Is a rocking night for television. And McFee’s a smart man, a brilliant man, a man who has plans (very McVet of him to have plans, right?) and I trust him because…hello? He has done pretty damn well by our show thus far. So I trust him. But still…do me a favor and set your VCRs and your Tivos and most important, plant your heinies in front of the TV Thursday night at 9 pm and watch. Okay? So I don’t burst a blood vessel in my brain from the stress? Because I really love Mer and Der and Burktina and Iz and Alex and George and Callie and Addison and the Chief and Bailey and I’m like this worried Mama whose kid starts a new school and maybe won’t make any friends.

Enough about the freaking and the Thursdays. Let’s discuss the thing you guys wanna know about. Which is what’s gonna happen in the first episode. Ready?

???

Okay, yeah, I can’t tell you anything. Not anything in detail. Cause that takes the fun out of watching. But I’ve noticed that a lot of you in the comments section and over on the message boards seem to be dissecting the promos for clues. And all I have to say is…we are going places you can’t imagine. Or maybe you can imagine but you don’t expect. And I want to tell you, really I do but…well, I’m trying to keep it to myself.

The first episode is going to take place pretty much where the end of Season Two left off. Because I don’t believe in jumping ahead three months and leaving people scratching their heads and muttering, “Dude…what happened while we were away?” I feel like SO much happened at the end of last season that I owe it to the characters to have them deal with the aftermath. And I owe it to you to let you watch the aftermath. Cause Denny died (yeah, I’m still not over that – I saw Jeff Dean Morgan a week ago at the DVD release party and almost burst into tears of joy and hugged him for about ten minutes because it was like Denny was back and alive and in my arms…but alas, it was just JDM who is super-cute and incredibly talented and has grown this adorably sexy scruffy stubble but is, in fact, not actually Denny anymore because Denny is dead) and Burke got shot and Meredith lost her panties…

Those panties…dude, those panties play a big part in the first couple of episodes. Those panties are key. Cause Meredith never put them back on. She rushed out to deal with Izzie and left Derek who was asking “Meredith, what does this mean?” and she never had a chance to put those panties back on. So watch for the panties – and I don’t just mean the shot in the promos that has them on the bulletin board in the hospital.

The first episode (which is called “Time Has Come Today”) deals with, not just the aftermath, but also with the past. I encourage you to watch the original very first episode of Grey’s Anatomy from Season One because, if you pay attention to the dialogue and the details, you will be rewarded in this premiere episode with some (hopefully) very interesting tidbits. And I hate the word “tidbits” but it does describe what I mean perfectly. This first episode of Season Three is meant to reward hardcore fans -- it’s also meant to bring us to a place where we can say goodbye to Denny as well as deal with the Mer/Der/Finn of it all. Just remember that nothing is ever wrapped up easily on this show. Because things aren’t neat and clean in real life.

Here I should stop. I shouldn’t say anything more. Because I don’t want to tell you too much. Cause I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Watch.

Thursday night.

9 pm (8 pm if you live in the midWest).

Watch and let me know what you think…

More from Shonda on the Season Premiere Episode “Time Has Come Today”…

Original Airdate: 9-22-06

(A word to our Canadian friends: you may not want to read this if you don’t want to know what happens. I’m sorry.  I’m so so sorry that happened to you guys.  We can’t wait for you to catch up with us next week.  Also, I know many spoilers are being posted out there in web-land about next week’s episode but, you should know, we won’t be posting them here.  I can’t control what happened but I’m not gonna add to it in any way…)

So, it’s good to finally be able to TALK about the episode instead of NOT talk about the episode. I have been dying to discuss this with you all and find out what you think.

This episode for me was really a chance to deal with the things that had been haunting me all summer. Especially Izzie. I’d been pretty worried about her, you see. She was in such pain when we left her. And let me tell you, I watched that final scene in Denny’s room where she wouldn’t get out of the bed more times than is probably normal for someone who WROTE the thing. I couldn’t help it -- Katie Heigl’s amazing performance sucks me in every single time.

Anyway, I was worried about Izzie. And I knew that she was going to really be suffering when we see her again this season. But I wasn’t sure how to make it clear that she was grieving without having a funeral. And I really didn’t want a funeral – I see them on TV and they never have the impact that a real funeral does. They never have that surreal, horrible sinking feeling you get when sitting at the funeral of someone you care about. There’s a distance to a funeral with TV for me. You sit at a funeral and you find yourself re-living all these moments in time and regretting things…

Which is why this episode is about time. And being stuck in a moment.

So Izzie is stuck. On the bathroom floor, unable to bring herself to move. Because taking off that dress? Means Denny is really gone.

George and Derek are stuck in the locker room, quarantined. Where they end up discussing the merits of love and saying “I love you.” George and Derek are the last two people you’d expect to connect but, here, in this situation, they do. And I think a wonderfully unexpected parallel is drawn between George and his feelings for Callie and Derek and his feelings for Meredith.

Bailey is dealing with Omar who is stuck in a room alone, grieving for his wife. And she’s feeling all the guilt in the world over what happened to Denny.

Meredith is stuck at home. Taking care of Izzie and feeling trapped by what happened with Derek.

And Addison is walking around with a pair of black panties in her purse. Stuck with a group of teenage girls and their parents who won’t claim a newborn baby found in a trash can.

Everyone is stuck. And everyone, EVERYONE, is plagued. By the past.

The flashbacks were something I’d been wanting to do for a while. I really felt that we needed to see Addison and Derek and the moments after he discovers her in bed with his best friend Mark. Because what Addison did to Derek is SO much worse than what happened between Meredith and Derek in that exam room at the end of the season. I wanted us to remember that she betrayed him long before he betrayed her. And that Addison herself is suffering over her choice to have an affair.

I also wanted very badly to reveal the first moment Meredith and Derek meet. It is the night before the interns’ very first shift. And if you remember the first episode of Season One, there was a mixer that night. And there’s Meredith – with her (as George described in the pilot) “black dress, slit up the side, strappy sandals” in the bar. And she meets Derek. And they are so fresh with one another, it’s all so new. There’s none of the baggage that they have now. I just love when Meredith says “so if I know you, I’ll love you?” so SURE that she never will. That he’s just another guy. And when Derek asks Meredith what her story is, she says “I’m just a girl in a bar.” And we KNOW that she’s not – we know about her mother and her daddy issues and her soft spot for sleeping with inappropriate men. But here, she’s just a girl. And Derek says he’s just a guy. But, unlike the first episode of Grey’s Anatomy, we know about his wife. And we just saw his pain at discovering Addison’s infidelity. And this is the “split second”, the moment they meet, that has changed the course of their lives forever.

It was a conscious choice on my part to not show Burke until the end except for the flashback at the mixer. Because I wanted you to watch the episode and either a) pine for his presence or b) forget about him – until Cristina walks into his room at the end of the day. Then I wanted the power of what he means to Cristina to overwhelm us when he asks her how she is and then she begins to cry.

“Don’t ever die” is one my favorite Cristina lines ever. Look at how much she’s changed since that night at the mixer.

Richard and Ellis and Adele – the relationships are changing. You only (purposely) get a taste of what’s to come in this episode but I think it is a potent taste. To have Adele walk out on the Chief…what is he gonna do?

And finally, I just want to talk about Callie and her “high school with scalpels” speech: Y’all know how much I love Callie. And how much I love how she loves George. It was really fun to be able to give her these words because it is what I’ve been saying is part of the premise for this show all along – these people are socially stuck in high school because they’ve been science geeks for so long.

Okay, my brain is fried from the stress of hoping people watched the premiere so I’m going to stop writing now. Maybe I’ll write more later after I read your thoughts.

Thank you for watching. Thank you for checking back in with us. I’ve gotta get back to work so you all have some more episodes to watch!!!

The last thing I’m gonna say for now…

A lot of you wrote to protest that I didn’t talk about McVet’s statement to Mer or about McDreamy’s “I love you.” So, here goes…

Oooh, wait!! Can I just tell you that, last night, McDreamy told me he loved ME? Okay, not so much McDreamy as Patrick Dempsey and not so much “me” as “working on the show” but still…my heart skipped a little beat just the same to have him utter the words in that voice of his. That man says “I love you” better than anyone on the planet. But he’s married. In real life. And on the show. As much as we like to fantasize, we all have to remember that…

Anyway, I was proud of Finn. I was proud of the fact that he comes over to say that he and Meredith aren’t exclusive. He’s pissed but they’re not exclusive. Because, honestly, he doesn’t know what happened in that exam room. He doesn’t even know there WAS an exam room. And he really is a good guy, a strong guy, a guy who feels something for a woman for the first time since his wife’s death. I like that he’s not petty or easily made jealous. I like that he’s confident enough to stick. And I LOVE that he says that Derek is bad for her and he (Finn) is a good thing. There is some truth to it. Given the history of Mer/Der. And Finn is a rescuer-guy. You know, rescuer-guys, right? They’re the ones who are determined to break through the scary/damaged barrier we dark and twisty girls put up. They’re the real thing, rescuer-guys are the guys you marry.

The guys you should marry. But then there are the Dereks of the world…

Let me say a little something about McDreamy men. They are scary and damaged themselves. They carry a little bit of tortured soul in them. But they mean well. And they’re honest. And they’re so, so, so darn tempting. Especially when they stand in your kitchen say “I just…I love you. I have loved you…forever.” How in the world are we supposed to say no to that? We should. We should send them packing. But…SERIOUSLY?

And so Meredith is left with this choice. Between what her brain knows she should do and what her heart wants her to do. And while it seems obvious and easy, it’s absolutely not. Finn has plans. And Derek’s got a wife. And there’s the choice to be healthy and mature and whole and the choice to jump off the cliff. And no one jumps off a cliff without a parachute if they know what is good for them. Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t have feelings for Finn. She definitely has feelings for Finn. And I know Derek says that he loves her but he says it about twenty episodes too late.

She stood there and said “pick me, choose me, love me.” She begged him. BEGGED him in the most humble, humiliating, soul-baring way possible. And he chose Addison. He walked away and chose Addison.

That would give any girl pause. Major, major pause.

Meredith’s pausing.

She’s hit the pause button.

But, don’t worry, I’m not dragging this out all season. I’m not gonna drag it out very long at all. I like to move things forward.

I like to take my finger off the pause button and see what happens next.

Okay, that’s all for now. Because I have get back to writing episodes…

-Shonda