Straight to the Heart/Grey Matter

Co-Executive Producer Mark Wilding on "Straight to the Heart"

Original Airdate 1/8/06

First of all, don’t worry. The fact that we did a clip show – or, if you will, a highlights show -- doesn’t mean we’ve run out of ideas for episodes. The writing staff still has a whole TON of ideas. Funny ideas, dramatic ideas… trust me, we’ve got it covered. So why do a clip show? For a couple of reasons...

First, with this kind of show – that’s to say, semi-serialized – the thinking is that a possible NEW VIEWER might not want to watch the show because they figure, why bother, I’m already so far behind I’ll never figure out what’s going on. So this is ABC’s way of throwing them a lifeline -- a tool for helping the uninitiated catch up with just about everything in the show up until now. I only watched a couple episodes of “Lost” last season but, encouraged by what I saw on their clip show, I decided to take the plunge this year. And I’m glad I did. It’s a great show and a helluva lot of fun.

Also, a clip show is a chance for current fans to catch up on stories they may have missed in the early going. Like, say… my mom. Who has watched just about every episode this season (after all, she’s my mom) but missed several from last season (when I wasn’t on the show). This way she can finally get a detailed history of, as she put it, “who jumped into bed with who and why they’re not jumping into bed with them anymore.”

Obviously, the show’s essentially a giant recap. It’s definitely NOT an episode. The first thing you notice is that we didn’t even do Ellen’s voiceover. We had it be Joe the bartender. Just like our potential new viewers, he’s an outsider looking in. Also, we had to leave out whole story lines. And that’s where our job got difficult. How do you whittle down more than 20 hours of first rate television into a single hour? In fact, that hour is really only 42 minutes if you count the commercials. Some of the story lines that we needed to show were pretty obvious. The love triangle with Meredith, Derek and Addison. Cristina’s pregnancy and relationship with Burke. Meredith’s complicated relationship with her mom. George’s season long crush on Meredith. Izzie and Alex butting heads in a “will they or won’t they have sex” dance…

The result is that we lost some great story lines – Joe the bartender’s standstill operation, Bailey enduring the early stages of her pregnancy, the Chief’s brain tumor. But all in all, I think we came up with something that gives the casual viewer a pretty thorough primer on where we’ve been and where we’re going. And if we pick up a few more “Grey’s Anatomy” fans along the way, so much the better. Not to mention, if it helps get my mom up to speed, then her son really will have done his job.