An Honest Mistake/Grey Matter

Pete Nowalk on "An Honest Mistake"...
Original Airdate: 2-19-09
When you’re writing an episode about God-like doctors it helps to have God-like actors playing them. Which is pretty much what happens every week when you work on Grey’s Anatomy. Sometimes though you get an extra dose of God, or as was the case in this episode, many extra doses. Kate Walsh visiting from Private Practice? Check. Jennifer Westfeldt and Ben Shenkman playing a husband and wife suffering through round after round of nailbiting surgery? Double check. A certain Oscar-winning actress who is as close to God as one can get in Hollywood? 
Yup, I’m talking about Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway who was in some movies called Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown, and Network. Faye Dunaway who was nominated for 3 Academy Awards. Faye Dunaway who was kind enough to lend her genius to Grey’s and, by doing so, make me one giddy writer.
When we come up with characters in the writers’ room we usually have hoop dreams about the actors who could play them. A beautiful model whose face was scarred in a terrible motorcycle wreck? Let’s call her Angelina. An ex-President in need of a quadruple bypass? Call Bill Clinton’s agent. A legendary surgeon who can both inspire and scare the crap at of us with just one look? We need someone like Faye Dunaway. Not that she’d ever agree to do it… 
“She agreed to do it? Are you FOR REALS SHONDA??!!” That was me when I found out Faye had signed on to play Dr. Campbell, Seattle Grace’s first female surgeon. Actually I’m still pinching myself from the whole experience. Watching Faye transform herself into this character was a gift. Not only was she fun to watch, but she was also so lovely, generous, and prepared through the process. And when I say prepared I mean that Faye did so much research for her surgery scene that I now personally trust her take out my gallbladder. I’m not kidding. Faye Dunaway knows how to do a cholecystectomy. That is dedication, people. 
So that’s my love letter to Faye Dunaway. I guess you could say my adoration is not so different from the way patients come to feel about their doctors. When you allow someone to cut into you and poke around in your very delicate, very fine-tuned insides you have to trust that they’re an extra special breed of human. It’s like what Addison told Derek in last week’s episode – that she needed him to be a God in order to trust him to save her brother’s life. And Derek, as usual, was up to the task. Even better, as Mark Sloan told him this week, he looks good doing it. The dude’s a God, no doubt about it…
Now at this point I imagine some of you are about to yell at your computer. Or at me. Yell something in the vein of “THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET HIM CUT OUT THAT WOMAN’S FRONTAL LOBE AND MURDER HER?!! YOU’RE THE MURDERER. A DEREK SHEPHERD MURDERER!!” Or maybe that’s just what I yelled at myself when we were breaking this story in the writers’ room. A lot of the writers felt the same way. We were nervous to have Derek make a mistake that could possibly be attributed to a patient’s death. But after much discussion – and real life research with real life surgeons – we agreed that this was a story we had to tell. Doctors, like the rest of us, mess up. And when they do, well… 
Okay, I get it, this whole doctors making mistakes thing is not the most uplifting topic for a blog. Debbie Downer is not who I’m trying to be (even if, deep down, that’s exactly who I be). I guess all I really want to say is that you need to keep watching in order to understand why we chose to tell this story with Derek. It might not be the easiest thing to watch – seeing one of your heroes become human – but it will pay off. Besides, we have to give every person bold enough to work in medicine credit. Frankly it’s why I’m very happy that my job right now is to write this blog and not, say, cut an aneurysm out of a pregnant woman’s brain. When I think about this – the frigging pressure doctors are under everyday – it doesn’t surprise me that they’d have some issues to deal with. Or how they might need to punch the crap out of each other every once in awhile.
How’d you feel about that fight? Personally I found it hard to watch. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good argument. But with words. Verbal sparring is more my style than some bloody, violent, broken face brawl. I didn’t even know what to write for this scene so I think I put some line in the action that said “Mark and Derek kick the crap out of each other, etc., etc…” and left it up to the director and crew and actors and to figure out the rest. Choreographing a fistfight on a tiny catwalk that hovers 200 feet in the air (in a real hospital by the way) is not an easy feat. And for that I’d like to give major props to Randy Zisk and Herb Davis and everyone on the crew who made the fight look so freaking real. Meanwhile I stayed back by the craft service table and watched the whole thing through my fingers. And just wait till you see the fallout from the fight in future episodes. Again, it’s not going where you think…
Know what else isn’t? Meredith and Derek. And that’s all I’m going to say. Because saying anything else would get me fired. Besides, you actually don’t want to know. If you’re like me you watch TV because it’s enjoyable and surprising. Telling you anything more will just take away from your own personal enjoyment of a story. (How’s that for playing coy?)
Onward. How about that gnarly wound Dr. Campbell left her patient with? Dissssssssgusting. Cristina, being Cristina, felt this mistake was unacceptable. Owen, being Owen, thought it simply proved that surgeons are human. No need to judge there, missy. Owen’s take of course is informed by the fact that he has made a few mistakes himself. A secret ex-fiance who appeared in last week’s episode, for example. And now he’s finding himself involved in a relationship with someone who, for better or worse, holds people to very high standards. Still, what I love about these two is that their professional disagreement didn’t get in the way of their sexy sexiness. At the end of the day they can still sit down, have a drink, and say things like, “I want to be around 40 years from now.” Hot damn.
Back to the depressing stuff. Namely, Izzie. Who is not anemic. Sadie mixed up the blood samples (as many of you guessed, gold stars all around). Now by the end of this episode Izzie has her correct test results in a folder. We debated back and forth about this moment in the writers’ room. Should we know what’s in that folder before Izzie goes to teach her interns? Or should we delay it, revealing what Izzie knows only as her interns figure it out? Having watched the episode, and knowing what happens in the next, I think we made the right decision. Shonda’s been pitching this scene of Izzie putting her scans up for the interns since the start of the season so it was exciting to finally to watch it come to life. Regardless of what’s going on with Izzie – be it nothing or some dire diagnosis that might or might not explain the Denny of it all – a day like the day Izzie’s had in this episode could break a lot of people. I wouldn’t blame her for just wanting to go to Joe’s and get wasted. Instead Izzie chose to use this very difficult moment in her life as a teaching moment. It’s selfless. And admirable. And I love her for it. Just wait till the next episode where we find out more about Patient X. 
Are you annoyed with all this “wait and see” stuff?? I know, I’m actually annoyed at myself. Which is why I won’t do the same thing with Callie and Arizona. I will say this though. I totally understand why Arizona wouldn’t want to date a newborn. It’s like getting a Freshman as your Physics lab partner even though you’re a Senior who not only knows the Laws of Motion but has mastered them in ways that would rock that Freshman’s world. Which is not to say the Freshman won’t grow to be really good at Physics, or that Callie won’t catch up to Arizona on the lesbian front, it’s simply that Arizona might not have the patience to wait that long. You, however, should. Have the patience. Because this story man…
I am officially stopping with the teasers. No more carrots dangled. Really. Not about George. Or Bailey and her Peds fellowship. Or Alex and his secret love child with the Chief’s secretary Patricia. Okay, made that last one up. But to be honest there’s a small part of me that’s jealous I don’t get to watch the show from my couch along with the rest of you every week… I’m lying. Because I’m about to go into the writers’ room to work with the rest of the staff on episode 521. That’s only 3 episodes from the end of the season, people. 3. And boy are you gonna be floored. Okay, last time I do that. Really…
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