On the Tube / By Alan Pergament
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ returns with Kevin Everett case, Bernadette Peters
As if Western New Yorkers don’t have enough reason to watch tonight’s two-hour season opener of ABC’s very popular “Grey’s Anatomy,” there is a local angle. The Kevin Everett case is used in one of the plot lines of the medical series, which airs at 9 tonight on Channel 7. The name of the former Buffalo Bill isn’t mentioned. But before an experimental therapeutic hypothermia treatment is tried on a patient with a severe spinal injury, the success of the treatment on a “Buffalo football player” is discussed, and a Buffalo hospital is referenced.
I’m no medical expert, but my memory is that the treatment occurred at a different hospital than the one mentioned, and it had to be started within a critical time period to be beneficial.
Of course, “Grey’s” is only a TV show, and the importance of medicine is really secondary to the show’s soap opera elements involving Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) and all the other bed-hopping characters.
The Grey-Shepherd relationship has become more than a little tiresome, which is one reason many critics are no longer in love with the series.
Creator Shonda Rhimes seems to be using what is happening at Seattle Grace Hospital as a metaphor for the show’s critical fall. Once one of the top trauma units, it has fallen to No. 12 to the exasperation of hospital chief Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr). That’s about where the series now stands in the hearts of critics.
Rhimes has enlisted three classy veteran actresses — Bernadette Peters, Kathy Baker and Mariette Hartley — to guest star in the premiere as victims of a car accident resulting from ice, which is something Western New Yorkers know all about.
The characters, who have imperfect marriages, cause Meredith — who admits she is afraid of a happy ending — to see applications with her potential life with Derek. This creative device is getting very old, though not as old as Meredith and gal pal Cristina (Sandra Oh) are portrayed in a scene that is unintentionally painful to watch.
Cristina speaks for the audience when she offers Meredith a bribe if she’ll just stop talking about Derek.
Rhimes wisely has added some much-needed new blood in Kevin McKidd, who plays a risk-taking unorthodox Army trauma doctor and potential love interest for one of the female characters. (McKidd of HBO’s “Rome” and NBC’s “Journeyman,” also co-starred with Dempsey in the romantic comedy “Made of Honor.”)
McKidd’s character suggests the experimental case inspired by Everett, which also has applications to an experimental romantic relationship. Additionally, there’s a third new potential relationship between characters that looks so high school.
The two-hour opener is so slow-moving at times that it appears that Rhimes may have as much trouble getting “Grey’s” back in critical favor as Webber has getting Seattle Grace back where it belongs among the top trauma hospitals.
Five years on
“Desperate Housewives” creator Marc Cherry’s experiment of moving his female characters five years ahead in their search for happy endings begins with a premiere episode at 10 p. m. Sunday that takes awhile to get past the new cliches.
The actresses — Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria Parker, Felicity Huffman and Nicollette Sheridan — seem to have found the fountain of youth. The circumstances of their characters have changed radically, but they don’t look any older for the most part than they did “five years ago” despite some wardrobe attempts to make them look a little frumpier.
However, the plot lines have aged. The new male character, Dave (Neal McDonough of “Boomtown”) is this season’s mystery man. Another male character, Jackson (Gale Harold of “Queer as Folk”), was introduced as Susan’s (Hatcher) new lover in last season’s finale.
Naturally, the opener deals with what happened to Susan’s husband, Mike Delfino (James Denton). Viewer satisfaction is not immediately guaranteed.
The opening hour drags at times and there is only one moment near the end that passes as even a minor surprise. But the good news is that Episode Two is much more enjoyable.
TV Review
“Grey’s Anatomy” ★★★
(Out of four) 9 p. m. today, Channel 7
“Desperate Housewives” ★★★
10 p. m. Sunday, Channel 7
