Who's Zoomin' Who?/Grey Matter

Harry and Gabrielle on Syphilis!
"Who's Zoomin' Who"
Original Airdate: 5/22/05''
Wow. Season one. It seems like such a long time ago. This was our first script for the show and as with all first scripts, you’re just a little bit nervous. What cool stories can we come up with? Can we capture the voices of the characters? Will it be dramatic enough? Will it be funny enough? Will Shonda like it? 
Fortunately after a few weeks in the writers room with our brilliant colleagues, we felt pretty confident about our stories: Richard’s possibly career threatening optical tumor, Meredith forced to confide one of her dark secrets to Derek; Burke’s oldest friend discovering he not only has an ovary, but a cheatin’, knocked up wife… 
But George, what should we do with George? Hmmm.. How about… Syphilis!!
Nobody at the network had a problem with Richard’s story, or the Burke story, but we’ve got to admit the syphilis was a tough sell. We had to convince the powers-that-be that our storyline would not only be dramatic, it would be FUNNY. Fortunately, Shonda had our backs. We’re Grey’s Anatomy after all, genital highjinks is our specialty!
We ended up creating a David Letterman-esque “Top Ten Reasons We Can Give George Syphillis List” and sent it with our episode outline to the studio and network. Finally, they were convinced and we were in business. It wasn’t until we actually sat down at the computer that we had a twinge of doubt. Could we really make a disease that results in open sores and possible insanity, funny?.
You’ve seen the results, so we’ll leave it to you to decide but we think TR and Sara Utterbeck (Olivia) were amazing in their respective roles. George getting the shot in the butt scene still makes us laugh and when George attacks Alex in the locker room, awesome.
Of course, what we should’ve realized is that Monday morning no one would be talking about syphilis, they’d be talking about Addison. The final scene of the episode, when Addison just comes up out of nowhere was amazing to write and awesome to shoot. (In fact the first time Kate Walsh said, “And you must be the woman who’s screwing my husband?” I, Gabrielle, almost ruined the take because I couldn’t stop myself from squealing, “nooooooo….” as I watched the monitor in video village. And I knew it was going to happen! Harry looked at me like I was crazy, (Okay, I, Harry, have to admit I was also kind of squealing in a very manly way on the inside).
So, anyway, here below, made public for the first time anywhere, is the super-secret “Top Ten Reasons We Can Give George Syphilis List” we sent to the network. Enjoy!
TOP TEN REASONS WE CAN GIVE GEORGE SYPHILIS:
1. Syphilis goes AWAY. It’s a serious STD. If untreated it causes madness and death – however- once diagnosed it can be treated and cured with ONE SHOT OF PENICILLIN.
2. Rockdale County – an upper middle class community – had an outbreak of syphilis among white fifteen-year-old college bound girls.
3. It has a nickname: “The Syph”
4. 9/21/04 – breaking news – sharp increase in cases of syphilis in New York state.
5. 70,000 incidents a year – that’s 192 a day and 8 an hour.
6. An Epidemiologist from the CDC, stated an outbreak of syphilis among Surgical Interns is completely reasonable and plausible event because of the following:
a. Our characters move in a closed network of people.
b. Long hours, lots of stress and little contact with people outside the hospital can lead to having unprotected sex with people you work with.
7. Syphilis has catchy prevention campaign slogans such as:
a. Look What’s Back! Syphilis!
b. Stop the sores.
c. Making every penis a healthy penis.
8. The anti-syphilis campaign has TWO mascots:
a. A healthy cartoon penis.
b. Mr. Phil, a red cartoon syphilis lesion
9. ER hasn’t done it.
10. Did we mention that syphilis is completely CURABLE with ONE shot?!
-Harry and Gabrielle
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