Grey's Anatomy Made Simple

This past spring, ABC added a series to its Sunday night schedule (at ten o'clock, Eastern time) which turned out to be a real winner in the ratings. The show is Grey's Anatomy. It's set in the Seattle area and centers on a group of surgical interns who are learning the ropes in the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital.

It took over the time slot held earlier by David Kelley's Boston Legal. Grey's Anatomy became so popular that it held on to the highly desirable Sunday night spot longer than originally planned (forcing "Boston Legal" to take up residence on Tuesday night on ABC's fall 2005 schedule).

At first glance, Grey's Anatomy appears to be just another medical show. What accounts for its immediate popularity and success in the ratings? After all, ER had made history when it first came on the air a dozen years ago, giving viewers a ringside seat of the action in a Chicago hospital's busy Emergency Room.

Assisted by real life medical personnel who advised directors and actors about how to simulate the professional actions of doctors, nurses, technicians and others in an ER as they endeavored to render medical assistance, sometimes under very trying circumstances, the show succeeded in creating a startling, and very compelling, look of realism.

Ever since, TV dramas have upgraded the sets (and action) used for any hospital scenes they may contain. Thus, there's no new ground to be broken by Grey's Anatomy, in terms of those considerations.

Perhaps the best explanation for the show's meteoric rise to the top of the ratings charts is based on two key aspects of the show--(1) the emphasis on characters and (2) the the brisk dialogue given to those characters to utter.

Unlke House, for example, which focuses attention on a medical mystery to be solved each week, Grey's Anatomy is introducing viewers to a group of interns and letting them get to know them as people first and doctors second. In fact, each show opens and closes with off-camera narration offered by one of the interns--Meredith Grey.