Joan Rater on "(I Always Feel Like) Somebody's Watchin' Me"...
Original Airdate: 10-1-09
Hi and WELCOME TO SEASON SIX! Kind of amazing if you think about it. It’s amazing to me, at least. I’ve never had the same job for this long. In TV, there’s a lot of hopping from show to show, a new job every year, so the fact that Tony and I haven’t hopped for awhile, we’ve gotten to spend 5 years with the same characters (on screen and off), has been such a great experience. So Yay!
We had this conference at the end of last year, all the writers, where Shonda asked us to imagine what we wanted Season Six to look like. We were all given the task of thinking, dreaming, imagining what we wanted for our show, our characters. We all had to present our ideas, and because it’s Shonda, there were prizes. For originality, for best ideas, for most interesting presentation, and because there was this sort of formal presentation-like quality to it, it became kind of scary. But once everyone finished complaining and procrastinating and avoiding and stuff, people came up with some really amazing presentations. There was a puppet show. Songs were written. There were etch-a-sketch art drawings of operations. What I decided to do for my presentation was go be a resident for a day. So I got a trauma surgeon at County Hospital to agree to let me follow him around for 24 hours. Oh my God, people! I got to go into an OR. Blood was splattered! It was awesome! Anyway, I’m sharing this with you to tell you that Season Six is going to be awesome. People came up with some amazing ideas. There was passion. There was humor. There was nudity! Not really. Actually that was a rule. Shonda said no nudity and no live animals. But we were all inspired and stuff. Which was Shonda’s point. To inspire us. And so along the lines of inspiration… I’d like to use this blog to share with you some of the things that inspired me during the writing of this episode. If that sounds really boring to you, I apologize, I’ll try to make it interesting and, as a little prize for reading the blog, I will reveal a secret about myself at the very end. Something I have never told a soul. But you have to keep reading…
After Richard dropped the bomb that the hospital would be merging with Mercy West, we knew that this episode would have to deal with people’s paranoia. Because merger means change. And change means fear. And the worst kind of fear is the kind that lives in your head. The dark thoughts. The paranoia. The worst case scenarios that you play out that usually don’t come true. And with Richard holing himself up inside his office, it’s just a breeding ground for rumor, fear and paranoia. So, when we started talking about this episode, the theme of paranoia emerged pretty quickly. And right away I thought of doing a medical story about a paranoid schizophrenic. And my inspiration for the story of Tom and Jodie came from a kid I knew growing up named Jon. I babysat for him. His mom, Barbara and my mom are friends. We went on vacations with their family. And he grew up and became a paranoid schizophrenic. My mom recently told me a story that when Jon (who’s now 30) needs a haircut, Barbara is unavailable all day for golf or bridge because she never knows how long it will take for Jon to find a barber shop he’s okay with. She has to drive from barbershop to barbershop, waiting for him to get a ‘good feeling’ about one. It might happen right away, it might take all day. And she’s patient and kind and she just does it because she’s his mother. I was really moved when my mom told me this story because I know these people and I know how painful this has been for her but how she just handles it, with dignity and humor. I can just picture the scene in the car as she pulls up to yet another one, “Well, Jon?” I can totally see her trying to talk him into giving one a try. And I can see him wanting to do it, to please her, but ultimately being too afraid and telling her they have to try another one. I can just picture the front seat of that car, so full of love and disappointment and fear as they negotiate this very mundane thing that for them has become anything but mundane. Then the story became what it became, with Tom choking Lexie, and falling down the stairs creating a real dilemma for Jodie. And the idea of Bailey pricking her finger to show Tom that she’s human, she’s a mother and she’s a doctor and she’s human, that idea came from Krista, but the original inspiration was the complicated love that I’ve witnessed between these family friends.
So we knew what our main medical story was going to be and we decided that we wanted everyone in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, techs, everyone, to be scared. Scared to leave the hospital, scared to give up any edge. Just scared. No one is safe and that kind of infection running through the hospital is easy to relate to. In the Writer’s Room there are a few of us who operate in a perpetual state of paranoia, so on the one hand it was easy to write that stuff and fun to tell funny stories about our crazy thoughts. But here’s the thing about crazy thoughts - sometimes they aren’t crazy. Case in point – here is an email I wrote to the writers in July telling them about a crazy, paranoid night I spent worrying about my cat -
“ Last night I woke up at 4 am and remembered that at about 2 am I had heard some weird cat meowing, like a cat dying, and I suddenly realized that our cat was dead. I knew, just KNEW that the sound I heard was Fern being killed by a coyote. Now, Fern spends every night outside and then at EXACTLY 5 am she appears at the porch door outside our bedroom and meows to be let in. But last night I knew that Fern would not appear on schedule because I just knew she was dead. Oh, because not only had I heard the weird cat meowing at 2, but there had also been some weird dog barking at about 10 pm that in my 4 am head meant a coyote had been stalking the neighborhood earlier and had settled on my house to wait patiently outside of until the perfect opportunity to kill my cat arose. At 4 am this is what I knew had happened FOR SURE. So what did I do? I woke Tony and told him the cat was dead. I went downstairs and began googling how to help your children deal with a dead pet advice. I googled the sound that a cat being killed by a coyote makes. I considered not telling Sally and hoping she'd never notice, I prayed, I went outside (at 4 am!) and looked for (blood?) evidence, I thought about what a perfect cat she had been. I blamed myself for not being more vigilant about keeping the cat in at night. I let myself off the hook because I, told myself, Fern loved being outside at night and who was I to deny her her animal urges, I decided that I would tell my kids some version of "Fern lived a great life, a cat life, and as part of a cat's life there is danger, the circle of life, etc", I decided I'd tell the kids Fern got cancer and we put her to sleep, I decided we'd never get another cat. I decided we'd get 2 kittens right away. I decided to get another dog. And then at 5 am, on the dot … Fern came to the door outside our bedroom and meowed to be let in.”
We laughed about my craziness in the writer’s room the next day and then guess what happened a MONTH later?!!! The cat disappeared. For good. I don’t mean to make everyone all sad with the story of my dead cat, I’m just saying, sometimes you are just being paranoid and sometimes you aren’t, so what are you supposed to do? Be like Lexie and live you life in that kind of heightened fearful state? No, you have to keep going, walk the dog, eat dinner, live … you have to find a way to stop living in fear … Especially if you’re a surgeon … you need to be able to put your fear aside …
Which is why I loved the scene where Owen, Derek and Mark take Cristina, Meredith and Lexie to the baseball field. This is one of the first times Owen has seen Cristina’s intensity. And I love that he makes her leave the hospital, focus on something else. That’s why he’s so good for her. The scene was actually inspired by Shonda saying, let’s do a scene where they’re all playing baseball. But when I finally saw it, it makes me want to write more scenes like that, with our doctors outside of the hospital, little glimpses of them in real life. One of my favorite Grey’s moments of all time was this Season One scene where Meredith and Cristina are outside jogging and they stop and they’re laying in the grass and they decide they need to cry. And they’re like, “Now? Should we cry right now?” Or something like that. Anyway, I love those little glimpses of our people as “real” people.
Back to the inspiration … Izzie’s story was very much inspired by my friend Lynn, who has cancer and runs her own company. A big concern for her while she gets treated is making sure her employees have confidence in her and don’t see her as sick or weak. She told me that that went into her decision to get a really good wig which looks just like her hair did before chemo. It’s to put her clients and employees at ease. We live in Los Angeles and it gets really hot here and Lynn has said there are some days where she just looks at that wig and it’s the last thing she wants to put on, but she does. And, like Izzie, who used this as an opportunity to ‘try being a redhead”, Lynn also got a spikey short ‘weekend’ wig to try out a more fun hairstyle. Although, at home on the weekend, she usually goes wigless, her daughter prefers it and says she likes the peachfuzz.
I love that scene where Alex brings Izzie her 2 pm pill and a banana and water. She doesn’t want Alex to hover but he can’t help it, he loves her and that’s what you do for someone you love, especially when they’re trying to pretend they’re fine. And I love it when he tells her at the end that she can’t pretend she isn’t sick, that she needs to take responsibility for her illness and he can’t be her nurse. One thing we’ve talked about in the Writer’s Room a lot is the fact that we have these two married couples right now – Izzie and Alex, and Meredith and Derek, who had very different weddings, for very different reasons and we really want to explore what the idea of commitment means for them this season.
When we were writing the episode we realized that it didn’t seem right that Meredith would be paranoid, which is when we came up with the idea that because of her chaotic childhood, she gets calm in a crisis. It’s when she’s at her best. It’s what makes her a great doctor, makes her the glue that holds all her friends together, and it’s what Derek needs right now because whatever it is that’s going on with him and the Chief looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better …
And finally … the inspiration for the funny Cristina stuff with the kids came from my daughter, Sally. Every night when I get home she hides and I have to find her. But whenever I get close, she yells out orders from her hiding place, “You haven’t looked in the kitchen”, “try upstairs”, and then when I finally find her, she gets upset. She HATES being found! And therefore I HATE HIDE AND SEEK.
Look at that, big things are happening people, secrets are being revealed this season, even in blogs! I’m telling you, Season Six is going to be good!
This blog post was originally posted on greyswriters.com and an archive of the posts can now be found at ABC.com.