Something to Talk About/Grey Matter

From Stacy McKee, writer of "Something To Talk About"
Episode Airdate: 11/6/05
Ladies and Gentlemen - boys and girls! Step right up for one hell of a challenge -- Create a script to follow four unbelievably sweepsy episodes and a show featuring the most heartbreaking, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad trainwreck ever... Now - GO!
Ok - so maybe crafting this episode wasn't exactly like a crazy carnival ride… but at times, it was close. Not just because it's the first episode yet where Meredith and Derek never once have a real conversation together (and, let's face it, some of us wait anxiously every week for those quintessential McDreamy moments)… but also because - Hello. It's the episode after a trainwreck!!! How on earth do you follow something like that??
The answer is - you don't. At least, not with more of the same. If the train wreck episode made everyone cry (and you know it did -- that sloppy, sniffly, messy but you don't care because you're at home and no one can see you kind of cry)… then as far as I was concerned, my episode should make everyone laugh - hopefully, just as hard.
Enter: the Medical Fascinoma.
In the medical community, a "fascinoma" is an anomaly. A medical mystery. Something so rare or unusual that not only is it uncommon, but it's completely intriguing to the doctors around it. So if one were to show up at Seattle Grace, it would - quite literally - be "Something To Talk About." The perfect medical case to compliment Meredith's obvious character arc in this episode -- she's become a fascinoma herself. She's like a carnival freak show. The entire hospital is talking about her. Perfect.
Only, finding the perfect fascinoma was, as it turns out, easier said than done. I think we went through a good dozen different possible fascinoma cases in the writers' room - and by my final draft of the script, the fascinoma case had changed at least four more times… The more we brainstormed, the more obvious one thing became: What is fascinating to the medical community… is not so fascinating on TV.
For example, picture an episode about… outrageously high liver-function-test numbers. OR, an inappropriately transferred critical patient. OR a particularly slow night at the hospital during which the attending on-call… did NOT take a nap.
Yeah. Not so exciting. And definitely not all that funny.
In the end, the idea for a "pregnant man" came from one of us cracking a joke. "Too bad we can't just do something medically IMPOSSIBLE. Like make some dude pregnant. Now that would be a fascinoma." We all laughed. Things quieted down. There was a moment of silence, and then - it seemed obvious. Why not try?
So, after multiple drafts, obscene amounts of caffeine, and a great deal of sleep deprivation (yes - my script about a freak-show had pretty much turned me into one…) the episode was ready…
I coupled the pregnant man with a heart on fire and one very STEAMY kiss… to (hopefully) create an episode that people will definitely talk about.
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