The Moment Grey's Anatomy Went Off the Rails (And Never Recovered)
From the very start viewers of Grey's Anatomy knew that the show was something special.
Week after week the medical drama would captivate audiences all over the world with a much loved misfit group of young doctors ambitiously trying to further their medical careers whilst balancing their personal lives at the same time.
The show had friendships, rivalries, romances, and a touch of tragedy. People simply couldn't get enough of their favorite doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital (now Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital) but somewhere down the line, everything seems to have changed.
The initial few seasons were phenomenally written, but many fans changed their attitudes toward the show in season 9, when things started taking a turn for the worst.
Following the tragic events involving the plane crash at the end of the previous season, 9 was off to a dark and dreary start, but things kept going downhill for fans. The core friendships that had been so carefully built up throughout the show seemed redundant and cold.
The excitement, comedy, and light tension seemed to have faded out of the original group, and some of the friendships that followed simply didn't make sense.
The new group of interns was introduced in the same season and just weren't interesting to viewers, who didn't find them worth paying attention to.
There were new interns introduced like Jo, who was to become the love interest of one of the original doctors, who viewers found boring and unlikeable.
To make matters worse, the structure of the show had also changed. There were no more lunch break gatherings between friends to discuss their difficult patients or brainstorm complicated cases, no mornings spent at Meredith's house rushing to get ready and bickering, and no more after-work drinks at Joe's to get over a tough day in the operating room.
It was those moments that appeared in almost every single one of the earlier episodes and took the tension and heaviness away from the reality of the death and trauma the doctors faced whilst working in the hospital.
Without these interactions, the show started to feel heavy and fans found themselves almost waiting for the episode to be over instead of being captivated by what was going on with the doctors.
Obviously, the disappointment surrounding season 9 did not spell the end for the show, as it has continued for a total of 19 seasons, but many fans will still insist that the show has never gone back to what it was.
They miss the old days where the focus was particularly on strong female characters with ambition and depth, where the bond between certain characters became deeper than friendship and the power held in a good monologue could captivate viewers until the last word.