Walk on Water/Grey Matter

Shonda on "Walk on Water"
Original airdate: 2/8/07
Holy crap, am I glad it is my turn to blog again! I have missed it, let me tell you! How is everyone? You still out there? Still good?
Or are you yelling and screaming at your TV sets and cursing my name for throwing Meredith into the water and then rolling the credits on you?
I don’t blame you for the cursing. But please remember that next week, things get even more interesting and then the week after that, they get REALLY interesting. I don’t want to talk about it. Or give anything away….
Which means there’s not much I can blog about. Damn it. I can tell you that this episode (as well as the next) was directed by the famous Bossy McBossy Rob Corn. And that before he had a script, he kept coming into my office to say in that quiet, calm voice of his: “YOU. ARE. KILLING. ME.” 
See, it’s that time of year again. That time of year when I get all sick and flu-y and my brain goes stupid and so I start to lie face down on the carpet in my office threatening to flee the country because my ability to write has clearly leaked out of my ear while I was sleeping. Every year, like clockwork, it happens. And every year, like clockwork, it takes me by surprise. You’d think I’d learn. But I don’t. I don’t learn.
So Bossy McBossy is waiting for pages and I’m gathering my passport and calling the airports and Betsy (who sits in the office next to mine and keeps me sane) very kindly keeps coming in to remind me that I have pitched the entire 3 episode arc to her eight or nine times in vivid detail over the past five months. All I have to do, she says (using, I might add, the exact same voice one uses with a three year old who won’t give you the sharp objects in her mouth), all I have to do is WRITE DOWN the things I have pitched her. All I have to do PUT THEM ON PAPER.
HA!
Everyone knows the key component of serious, rampant procrastination is the inability to put anything on paper. 
Okay, I am actually procrastinating by writing about procrastinating. On to the point, which is this: Rob Corn worked his behind off shooting this episode with pages being fed to him as he shot and for that, I will no longer be referring to him as Bossy McBossy. Instead from this moment on, I will call him by his new tribal name: Shoots With No Script.
Now, Shoots With No Script will tell you that I had very definite ideas about this episode. And I did. But they were all character-based. They were all about Meredith’s attitude and the little girl and Izzie and her tub of butter and Cristina and the notion that, in choosing to marry, she fears that she is LITERALLY being left behind in more ways than having to stay at the hospital while everyone goes to the accident site. They were all about Derek and Burke and their conversation about “these women” and Richard and his badly dyed hair. My thoughts were all about disappearing.
They were not about things that Shoots With A Script needed to know. They were not, for instance, about what the ferry should look like when we first see it. Because, if you know anything about me, you know I don’t want to think about hurting a ferry boat. I, like McDreamy, have a thing for ferry boats. Ferry boats are awesome and, in fact, very safe. Ferry boats are amazing.
Ferry boats are a metaphor for Meredith, you know.
What I was interested in was Meredith and how she was doing after being hurt by her mother. And the devastation of the ferry boat was the best way to physicalize Meredith’s pain.
The little girl? She’s also a metaphor for Mer. A motherless lost girl who can’t speak for herself and disappears? Okay, that’s too obvious. But you all know Meredith’s been doing a dance with death for some time. Y’all know that if you’ve been watching. She’s dark, our girl. She’s dark and twisty. And I worry about her.
Now, I’m really worried about her because she’s in the water and I want to be clear with you: I don’t put people in the water for no reason. Meredith’s got issues, she’s got serious Mommy issues and she’s broken and she’s in the water. 
I killed Denny. I blew up Dylan.
I’m not entirely playing by the rules of TV here.
There’s a point. And it’s coming. Shoots With A Script and I have our fingers and toes crossed that it works.
Because what happens next…well, just wait and see…
Okay, I rambled and I procrastinated and I should just stop writing and let you go ahead and yell at me now…
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