And the Award Goes To…

Grey’s Anatomy‘s Katherine Heigl for having the guts to call it like she saw it. Ms. Heigl withdrew her name from consideration for this year’s Emmy Awards, because she felt the material that was written for her character, Izzy Stevens was not good enough.

Read the story here: Heigl Shuns Emmys

Good for her!  She’s so right.  The plot line for her character was awful this season.  The writers and producers took her down a path that was so wrong that it was almost insulting to viewers. I guess it started last season, but after a fight with his wife, George O’Malley got drunk with Izzy and they slept together.  Then this season, based on their vague memories of an “amazing” sexual experience, he decided to leave his wife to pursue a relationship with Izzy, which totally didn’t work out.  The two of them spent weeks trying to make an awkward love affair work, and it was awful to watch.  It made me cringe, and in fact, I stopped watching until the season finale.

Heigl herself said in a recent interview that she felt the affair was nothing more than a “ratings ploy.”  I also felt like when the producers realized the viewers thought the relationship was wrong, then they abandoned the story.  How are we, as viewers, supposed to invest in these stories and relationships that go nowhere? (More below)

And other than that, what did Izzy have to do this season?  After rolling around unsuccessfully with George, biting her lip and trying to avoid his wife for a few episodes, she was basically relegated to a background character, standing around with a clip board and working between the real action of Meredith/Derek and George/Lexi.

Izzy’s an interesting character.  She worked her way through med school by modeling, she’s got an illigitimate daughter that she’s never seen, but the writers don’t work with that.  Instead, they use the sex and throw her in bed with George.

Some have speculated that Heigl may actually be working to find a way out of her contract with the show, another smart move, if you ask me.  Shondaland seems like it must be the cattiest place in the world to work. The show itself is super-chicky, to the point that the men are plastic and one-dimensional, mere eye candy, and this fall’s Private Practice looks like it’s going to be even worse in that department.  Anyway, the writing In Shondaland is so…whatever the opposite of misogynistic is..that I could swear in Season Two of Grey’s that the writers were just trying to find ways to make male genitalia suffer.  Sometimes it seemed like they made up conditions just to be able to use the word “penis” on the air.  It was all very Elaina Bobbitt.

But back to the chicky nature of Shondaland.  I still don’t understand why Isaiah Washington had to leave the show.  Yes, he said a stupid and regrettable thing.  Yes, he brought it up again at the Emmys, again, stupid and regrettable, but he apologized. He tried to make amends.  He went to counseling, did his service, jumped through all the hoops the media or whoever demanded he jump through, and then, he was fired in the end.

Think about it — again, yes, what he said was stupid and regrettable, but if we fired everyone who said something stupid or regrettable in their work place, wouldn’t the economy collapse?

And really, I don’t care about any of that as a viewer of the show.  As far as I can see, those in Shondaland should have been jumping for joy over the attention all the controversy brought to the show, but instead, they held a grudge, and wrote him out.

And that sucked.  Because as a viewer, I spent three freaking seasons rooting for Burke to win Christina, to get her to open up to him and give him the love he deserved for being so patient with her crazy shit.  So then what happened?  I the shocking season 3 finale, he left her at the altar.  Didn’t make any sense at all, given the story arc of the show, and as a viewer with the kind of emotional investment I just described, I felt like we’d all gotten the shaft.  The whole thing was completely unprofessional.  No respect for the viewers at all.

So any way, my hat’s off to Katherine Heigl.  I know ultimately, these things don’t matter, but I still respect her for respecting herself and her craft.

I am officially finished with this show.