Grey's and Gray's

Another one of the occurrences that makes life at my house challenging on a regular basis is the intrusion of the absurd TV hospital inmates from Grey's Anatomy. These wannabe doctors spend inordinate amounts of time screwing up, screwing each other, whining, crying, cohabitating, being amazed by day to day hospital stuff and behaving pretty much like you would expect a group of high school sophomores to behave were they turned loose in you local hospital. Mrs. PFOS is a loyal watcher of Grey's Anatomy, so the big screen ushers the precocious doctor-kids into our house every week.

Were these people real, I have to think that the hospital would be devoid of patients, loaded with lawsuits and under attack by regulators. In the espisode to which I was most recently subjected, two female m.d.'s launched their new career as lesbians, one of the others was reading a manual to diagnose a patient who was flopping around on a gurney like a crazed carp, two others were trading a tumor patient back and forth...I would run, run like the wind, were I sent to a loony bin like this for work.

The show is named, of course, after Meredith Grey, the character who is the most saccharine, the least focused, the most promiscuous of all. Inspiring.

The show's title is a play on Gray's Anatomy, the famous medical book first published in England in the year 1858. The book is still being published today. Henry Gray would never make it in Meredith Grey's world.

Henry Gray, in pursuit of his idea to create an anatomy textbook for students, worked with Dr. Henry VanDyke Carter for 18 months disecting unclaimed cadavers and making detailed presentations of their findings. Henry Gray died of smallpox at age 34, three years after the book was first published. Gray's has been revised and enhanced in each edition since the beginning, turning into a compendium of medical knowledge reflective of the respective time of each edition. A quick search on Ebay showed back editions for sale starting at just a few bucks.

So, thank heaven for Henry Gray. I can only hope that the other Grey completes her training and goes into private practice with Kate Walsh, the Cadillac commercial babe who escaped from this hatch a couple seasons ago. Her new show sucks enough that it has a good chance to be canceled, bringing happiness to many. To me, anyway.