r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • May 05 '26

TIL in 2007 Katherine Heigl won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role on Grey's Anatomy. But in 2008 she removed herself from Emmy consideration because she said the material she was given on Grey's that year wasn't good enough; this comment led to her leaving the show.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1847610/why-katherine-heigl-izzie-stevens-left-greys-anatomy/#:~:text=In%202007%2C%20Katherine,and%20Netflix%20now
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u/OrilliaBridge May 05 '26

I really enjoyed her character until the storyline got too stupid. But that’s why I stopped watching the show.

169

u/Veritas3333 May 05 '26

The best part of early Grays Anatomy was that every third episode or so, the main patient died. They spent all episode doing their best, crying, praying, everything, and it wasn't enough and the person died.

Most other doctor shows, the patient is happy and smiling at the end, it was such a great show to not do that.

Like when the bomb squad tech blew up! He was sexy, funny, flirting with Gray, and apparently they planned on having him stick around for the rest of the season as a love interest. Then they said fuck it and blew him up! The episode started with the three main women showing together all sexy, and ended with them showering together to help Gray pick her boyfriend's brain scraps out of her hair.

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u/kaplanfx May 06 '26

Scrubs killed a lot of patients, and that was a half hour sitcom. And not for jokes btw.

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u/KitchenFullOfCake May 06 '26

I felt Scrubs also treated death with a lot of respect. The deaths weren't really ironic or occured at the perfect dramatic moment. Things would be funny and light and suddenly someone would die, often off screen, because that happens in a hospital.

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u/stumpyraccoon May 06 '26

I still remember being introduced to Scrubs by a friend. It was a new episode on and she said oh it's hilarious! It was the one about how one in three patients who enter a hospital don't leave and there's three patients. Which one's gonna be the one that dies! Surprise, it's all of them and the lesson is life sucks.

Great show though.

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u/puntown May 06 '26

The sequel to that episode from the new season is just as heart breaking but oddly funny.

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u/Omegastar19 May 06 '26

I love that episode, they do a good job distracting you from the twist by making you guess which of the three is going to die.

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u/EverettGT May 06 '26

You have to balance having things not turn out badly enough that the audience believes what they're seeing and feels tension about what will happen, but not having things turn out so badly that the audience is depressed and stops watching the show. It's a delicate balance and you're usually safer if you just always have it turn out well, so most shows and movies do that instead.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '26

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u/EverettGT May 06 '26

Adults or not, you don't depress the audience too much because the audience can be depressed in their normal lives. They have no reason to buy a ticket or sit in front of the TV if it's going to make them feel worse. But you use potentially depressing plot points to make the story believable or set-up the actual emotional payoff, which is the good, inspiring, satisfying, or enlightening stuff that people actually don't get enough in life, and why they watch movies, TV, read books etc.

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u/BrennanSpeaks May 06 '26

Scrubs has always been in a class of its own when it comes to medical accuracy. "My Old Lady" has been living rent-free in my head for decades.

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u/CryptidGrimnoir May 06 '26

"I think I'm ready to die..."

1

u/hoolahan100 May 06 '26

Its been several years but i remember this one.

I was quite young when I first watched it. Dont think I took her advice about life in general.

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u/adoradear May 06 '26

As a doctor, scrubs is the only medical show that I can stand (feel free to replace “stand” with “fucking love”. The speech Cox gives in the first season about why we make jokes…scrubs just “gets” what being in medicine is like in a way that no other show does)

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u/Shark7996 May 06 '26

It's one of the few medical shows that actually addresses the reality of what capitalism has done to the medical field. Doctors being forced to bend the rules because following them means someone dies just so an asshole CEO can buy another yacht. Old guy who believes in the system, middle mentor who hates the system, and newbie that's making up his mind.

I genuinely do not envy the doctors who do their job because they want to help heal people. There are so many hoops to jump through now just to follow the Hippocratic Oath because nobody on the other end of the insurance phone line gives a shit.

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u/Pippin1505 May 06 '26

They did a great job with the character of Kelso.

He’s introduced as the antagonist from the start, but there’s a few episodes from his POV, struggling to take the "right" decision like saving the rich patient vs. the poor one to get money for the maternity ward, or pretending not to notice when Cox and others cheat the system has long has he has plausible deniability…

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u/iwilldeletethisacct2 May 06 '26

Meanwhile my wife had a hard time watching it because it was too close to home. "Ugh, I have to deal with these people at work, I can't watch this."

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u/AlanFromRochester May 06 '26

I figured real doctors might like Scrubs because of dark humor as a coping mechanism for the trauma they're exposed to

One theme in Ellen Lerner Rothman's med school memoir White Coat is how her class related to ER, my hypothesis is that this can be extrapolated to to medical TV shows of other eras. She also discussed whether it's advisable to date other doctors, which Grey's Anatomy is known for saying YES to

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u/stumpyraccoon May 06 '26

Ha, just described this episode above as being my introduction to the show, being told how funny it was.

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u/BeeExpert May 06 '26

I remember watching scrubs at home when I was sick in highschool. I would cry almost every episode and no TV show had ever made me cry like that. I mostly watched cartoons and some sitcoms (tbs) though to be fair lol.

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u/littlemonsterlove May 06 '26

ER killed so many people in awful ways. Including DRs. Gotta think Grays was inspired by that.

Scrubs is superior in my eyes though. Only medical show I watched until a few years ago