It's the End of the World/Grey Matter

From Shonda Rhimes, creator and writer of upcoming post-Super Bowl episode
Episode Airdate: 2/5/06 -- After the Super Bowl!!!
So I’m all…”Pitch for the Superbowl episode? Sure, why not…they won’t pick us...so it’s no big deal…” I typed out a one page synopsis and sent it in to the powers-that-be at Touchstone and ABC. Then I lay back down on the couch and promptly forgot about it.
They picked us.
Now, to understand what this meant to me, you have to understand how I write. I don’t. Not until the last possible minute. Then I churn it all out in a crazed frenzy while eating ice chips and cursing the gods for not making me something sensible like an astronaut or a prima ballerina. Prima ballerinas do not have to write things. But I guess since they have to be freakishly thin, they may have it worse off than me. 
But I was sick. Actually sick – not my usual drama sick. So sick that members of the cast were peering through the door at me in my office and very kindly trying to suggest that maybe I might want to consider heading over to the nearest hospital and moving in for a while. So sick that the medical research team did an intervention and sent one of their own in to examine. So sick that the entire show had to be shut down for a week so that I could recover enough to not cough up pieces of my lung on my computer screen while writing. Let me tell you: it sucked.
Now, I tell you this as a shameless ploy for sympathy. I love sympathy as I am a neurotic writer. And to distract you from the fact that, because I am a neurotic writer, I procrastinated and procrastinated until literally the DAY of the read-through (a read-through is when we gather together the entire cast and they do us the honor of reading the script out loud at a big round table – even after a season and a half, it is amazing to me that I get to hear my words read aloud by these truly talented people). At which point, I started writing like a crazed fiend. I finished writing the script just in time for my team to make copies of the script and race them over to put them into the cast’s hands as they were taking their seats at the big round table. None of us, including me, had any idea if what I’d written would even work. I was nervous and wishing I was still sick. Because you never know. I love my actors and my actors like me well enough. But still…
Perhaps they would chase me with torches and stone me to death with rage at my idiocy. Perhaps they’d smile politely but coldly at me and run to call their agents so that they could beg to get off this show. Or, you know, perhaps they would raise me on their shoulders and carry me around singing showtunes in my honor.
They did nothing of the sort. What they did do was gasp, yell, hoot with laughter, applaud and openly weep as they read the pages aloud. Ellen Pompeo shrieked “HOLY CRAP!” right in the middle of the reading. Katie Heigl started to cry somewhere around page 20. Sandra Oh just kept whispering “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh, oh, OH MY GOSH.” And after I got hugs. I am not the hugging kind but still…if you stand very still and hug back, it is nice. The director, Peter Horton, was thrilled. The writers were thrilled. The studio and the network were thrilled.
Thrilled. It’s good, that word. Thrilled.
So please watch.
I hope you like it. A lot of work by the cast and crew went into this episode. Work I’ll be able to explain to you after the episode airs and it stops being the big giant secret episode that we don’t talk about…
More from Shonda Rhimes on "The End Of The World..."
Episode Airdate: 2/5/06
Please tell me you watched the show.
PLEASE.
I say that because I’m gonna lie awake all night worrying that maybe you DIDN’T watch, that maybe you decided to go to bed or go out with friends or do something crazy like – I don’t know – NOT WATCH. So please, please, please…
I’m betting many of you got to the last moment of the episode, heard Meredith whispering “what did I do, what did I do, what did I do…” and shrieked at the TV when you saw the credits. That’s what my Mom did when I showed her the episode a week ago. She was all, “THAT’S ALL YOU ARE GONNA SHOW ME?! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!” And when I wouldn’t tell her, she got kind of mad and guilted me with the fact that I came out of her body.
To be fair to you, I get that you hate me right now. I mean…I left you hanging. But, to be fair to me, I did not know until a day into production that this was gonna be a two hour thing. See, I made this innocent call to Channing (the coolest executive at Touchstone TV – if you meet her, buy her a free drink because she was instrumental in our show ever getting on the air) and I asked if maybe we could have an hour and a half for this episode instead of just an hour. She said she’d make a few calls. A few hours later, the president of the network, Steve McPherson (another extremely cool person) had me on the phone and was like, “I think two hours would be amazing.” Now, a tip should you ever have your own TV show -- you don’t say no to the president of the network. Frankly, I didn’t even THINK about saying no. I mean, a chance to make the episode bigger? A chance to do all the things I’d wanted to do with the episode but could never have done in 42 minutes (which is how long an episode is without commercials)? That kind of chance, that kind of vote of confidence from the network for our show, our proverbial little show that could?
I said, “No problem.” Then I hung up and hyperventilated.
Because while I knew I could do this first hour, this hour that you watched tonight, I had NO IDEA what I was going to do to fill the entire second hour. So while director Peter Horton started shooting, I sat on the floor of my office and tried to figure out how to expand the episode without a) ruining the episode and b) expanding the episode so much that it didn’t flow. And I did figure it out. I think. You’ll have to watch next week to see if you agree.
About this episode: what I’m really proud of if that even though this episode is Grey’s Anatomy on speed, even though there’s a bomb in a body cavity, even though we had guest stars like Christina Ricci (how good was she?!) and Kyle Chandler (how cute is he?!), even though, even though, even though…it is still very much our show. It is still more about the relationships that it is about the medicine. 
What this episode is about is birth, sex and death. Bailey’s pregnant, Meredith’s afraid she might die and Izzie and Alex…well, they do. Don’t knock Izzie for going for it – when life hangs in the balance, we all do what we can for comfort. And her speech in the linen closet was one of my favorite performances of the episode. That, and Meredith’s long speech in bed to Cristina about Addison taking her McDreamy, her McDog, her McLife. But my favorite, favorite moment in the whole thing is the “Pink Mist” scene. It’s one of the first times we’ve ever had a scene on GA that didn’t involve a single one of our 10 main characters. And, as expected, Christina Ricci’s amazing but Dr. Milton…my God, we didn’t even have anyone to play the part until the very day we shot the scene and originally, he only had two lines…Dr. Milton is perfection. My favorite line? “Even beats.”
About the shower scene: I knew it was the Superbowl, people. I knew a little girl-on-girl would be good with the Superbowl boys and maybe keep them watching. I’m not stupid. But I also wanted to do something a) that was not gratuitous and b) that is turned on its ear in the second part that airs next week. And Katie, Sandra and Ellen (that’s Izzie, Cristina and Meredith) were total troupers for pulling it off with such humor. They wore sweatpants and little tube top thingies and soaped each other up for hours without a single word of complaint. And it was cold that day. Really cold. It’s why I love our cast. I write stuff and they leap. They’re leapers. So watch for next week’s shower scene and remember this one and know that I am shouting, “HA! You think girl-on-girl threesomes are real? NO WAY. THIS is how women take care of each other.”
The Music: a lot of you know that I pick the songs myself. But this episode was different. First of all, my editor Ed Ornelas and I used a lot of drums – which we’ve never done before. The drums are the sound of Meredith’s fear. Did you notice that the first Mer/Der scene starts with that drumbeat that sends us into a dream-like silence so you’d end up with the feeling that the moment between the two of them may or may not have happened? Did you notice that the drums signal death? I hope so. Second, we had this AMAZING song by Chris Martin and Michael Stipe in our hands that we could debut on our show if we had a place for it. And all the proceeds that came from people buying the song on iTunes would go to charity. So that ending, that song placement was like a gift.
But there are some greater moments coming. Please tell me you watched. And that you’ll watch again next week. Because honestly, aside from my daughter, I’ve never enjoyed anything more than working on this show. It is a pleasure entertaining you. 
EVEN more from Shonda... Thank you!
Okay….how much do I love you guys?
You really did watch. YOU WATCHED. Thank you. Even to those of you who wrote to say that I’m a horrid skank and that you hated the shower scene and you hated me and the show and puppies and candy and whiskers on kittens and raindrops on roses….well, you watched too and you have a total right to your opinion so….thank you too.
I am honestly so grateful that I am posting one more time. At first, I told myself I was posting because over 600 of you wrote back in the comments -- which is unprecendented and exciting for our little blog. Or that I was posting again because you had so many questions. But, truth is, I literally can not wait for you to see next week’s episode so I had to post. And because I really am grateful.
That and the fact that I’m all worried about my fellow Tivo users who had the show cut off early because, while Tivo can do a lot, it can’t know ahead of time that the Super Bowl is gonna run long.
I heard your screams of rage and pain all the way over at my house. Dudes, my Tivo didn’t catch the whole thing either. And I know that I have access to a recorded version of the show that I can watch unlike everyone else in America, but what I do not have is a full Tivo-ed version of the show with all the commercials and everything. Because I had this big old party going on with my friends and the cast and the crew and we were all so busy yelling and freaking out that we were actually on TV, that I missed all the commercials.
Truth is, I had to go hide in a corner while it aired because I was kinda overwhelmed by the whole thing. There was a Super Bowl. And then we aired right after it. That is CRAZY.
Anyway, I want all you Tivo-ers and people who missed the episode to know that I am personally begging the network to re-run the episode sometime before next Sunday so that we can have it for our Tivos. And maybe they will. I’ll keep you posted. Or you can make a call or send an email to the good folks at the network and suggest to them that they maybe want to run it again. Use your nicest voices and ask really, really politely. And don’t tell them you got the idea from me.
Also, I want you all who wrote to say “what happens next” to know that since you did not push me out your body the way my Mom did, I can’t tell you anything. I mean, I told her. I had to. She made me show her the episode. And I told my daughter who is usually in the next room whenever I’m watching the rough cuts of the show. But she is only three years old and frankly could care less about the show except when George comes on screen. When George comes on screen, my daughter puts down her Playdoh and yells, “That’s my friend!” She just likes the way he looks and the sound of his voice and the fact that whenever she sees him in real life, he speaks to her in a very serious tone as if she were Diane Sawyer and not a three year old with her finger up her nose. Which is a long way to say, I can’t tell you what happens next.
I can tell you there will be good music. And that you should probably be prepared for some pretty big stuff to happen. And that many people like this second part even better than the first part.
After next Sunday’s episode, I’ll try to write in more depth about the stories and the characters and why I did what I did in both episodes. Right now, my hands are tied because until you see “(As We Know It)” – which is the title of next Sunday’s episode – I really can’t say much without giving things away. And you know how I feel about that.
I read every last one of your posts. I always do. So do the other writers. We can’t tell you how much that feedback means to us. We don’t really check message boards and we try not to pay attention to the press. But we feel like you who post here are our core group, our friends and truth-tellers, so your words keep us going or make us think in new directions or inspire us when we are feeling as if no one is watching despite what the ratings say.
You guys kinda rock.
Kinda?
You just plain rock.
This blog post was originally posted on greyswriters.com and an archive of the posts can now be found at ABC.com.
Category:Grey Matter