One of my favorite things about the show is people get married a lot on the show.
And every person at the hospital leaves their job to attend said wedding. And so I just
imagined someone being like, "Oh my God, there was a car accident. There's so much blood." And
there's just a janitor there being like, "Sorry, they're at a wedding. Hope you feel better."
The Grey's anatomy death that I remember most was when George died. I think I was watching
around this time or maybe he died shortly after I stopped watching. But I seem to recall seeing that
there was a guy, he got hit by a bus and he was all lumpy and bandaged up and he couldn't talk.
And then he died. And I seem to recall that there were rumors that it was played by a different
actor, but I couldn't find confirmation of this. Nina, can you confirm or deny this?
I never heard that. That's actually really good.
Okay. Then I must have dreamed this.
McDreamed it.
It's super possible because what happens is this the character is going to enlist in the army. So
all his friends are going to stage an intervention and he never shows up because he's laying in a
hospital bed, all unrecognizably bloodied from saving a woman by jumping in front of a bus.
And the only reason they figure out it's him is because his nickname as a surgical intern was 007
because he had license to kill and he scrawls 007 into someone's hand.
That's a horrible thing for a doctor to be known as.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was definitely not the doctor that you wanted by your bedside. I'm really
sorry if T.R. Knight is watching this because I really like this character.
I like the character too.
But no. So he scrawls 007 into Meredith's palm and she's like, "It's George." Yeah.
And then they try to save them and then they don't.
Yeah, he does. I don't know if it is a different, I mean, it's very possible just a body double or
something, but he shows up at the very end of the episode in a dream sequence that makes it
clear that he's dying. So it could be T.R. Knight and it could not be. I actually don't know.
So what I take issue with here is that he's leaving the show because he had issues with
the show runner at that time, Shonda Rhimes.
He'd gotten into a conflict with one of the other actors, totally behind the scenes drama stuff-
Who left the show before that, long before that yeah.
Things were going on and it was time to go. So they write the character out by saying,
he's going to join the army. And then he gets hit by a bus anyway.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which is just one of those things where-
Are you saying that was overkill?
Kill or overkill. It's just literally like you already had an exit lined up for this
character. He was already being written out of the show, but then he gets hit by a bus.
I think For Grey's Anatomy the problem is it's been going on so long that I think sometimes
actors prefer to die on the show. Because every interview Sandra Oh does, they're like,
"So when are you going to go back to it?" And she's like, "I'm not. I've done so much
other stuff since then. Please watch Killing Eve. Please watch The Chair. Stop asking me."
She just left. And she left on good terms. She was just like, "I
want to go do other stuff." But they did not kill her character. And so every interview she does,
people are just like, "Are you going to go back to Gray's Anatomy?"
Okay. That was what I was going to ask.
Yeah.
Okay. So, yeah. So they do it kind of as an insurance policy against-
I think some actors are probably like, "Yeah, just give me a crazy death
so that I don't have to put the scrubs back on."
So you think this was T.R. Knight's idea?
I can only make guesses, but maybe. I mean, it's an insane ... It's also this is a show that loves
insane twists and really over the top, definitely not possible medical problems.
And this is a perfect marriage of those two things. So maybe they just couldn't resist.
How often does the insurance policy pay out on that? How often -
Do you mean on the doctors dying at this hospital because doctors
die at a much higher rate than the patients do.
Oh, I'm sure that that's true. That's high drama, but like, no, I mean how often does
it work that an actor gets killed on the show and then never comes back? Because my understanding is
dying on Grey's Anatomy, not a death sentence. So
you do come back for a bunch of dream sequences and fantasy what nots, right?
But that was a pandemic thing that we won't even talk about.
Okay. Interesting.
I'm coming to you for advice. I have no idea.
Yeah. That was a pandemic era, dream sequence vibe. Although,
I guess you're right. Jeffrey Dean Morgan came back in of the show's worst plot lines.
So that character died, right. He had a stroke or something?
He got a heart transplant and then had a stroke.
Okay. Naturally. And so how did he come back as his twin brother or?
No, he came back as a hallucination of Katherine Heigl's character to tell her she had cancer.
Explaining it in an extremely blunt-
There's nobody that you want to trust with medical history.
He was an oncology ghost.
He was an oncology ghost. And there was a lot of, he was her fiance. So there were a lot of
scenes where the two finally got together, which I think they wanted fans to like,
but we were all like, "He's dead. This is weird. Who's she talking to?" It's just baffling so.
Gotcha.
I don't know what the rules are really on Grey's Anatomy ghosts per se, but
I think it really depends on the actor and their relationship with
the show. I'm curious as to what Tom's weirdest death is.
I'm also curious.
You guys, I've been waiting weeks for you to ask me that. I'm excited.
I'm not terribly familiar with Grey's Anatomy, but like Brian I also have known women and they ...
Way to generalize, bud.
I'm speaking to my own specific opinion, experience.
Generally Grey's Anatomy is what comes on right around the time that ... It doesn't matter.
I had to get some outside help with this. I watched my first couple of episodes of Grey's
Anatomy ever to learn about this. I half paid attention, but I took a bunch of notes
on the stuff that I did. It's from a two-parter from season two
called Meredith Grey and the Gnarly Ballot of Bazooka Joe, Parts One and Two.
It gets an A+ for title.
And, Nina. I'm kind of counting on you to
help correct me if I'm mistaken about some stuff on this. Okay.
I'm more than happy to help with the episode that
definitely is called that. And not a totally different thing.
Absolutely right.
Oh, it's not called that?
No, it's called "It's The End of the World as We Know It."
If you say so, Nina, I just watched it. So I feel pretty confident about this.
All right. Fair enough.
You know which death I'm talking about though, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Unless you think a different character died, in which case I can't help you.
So Meredith Grey at the beginning of the episode, she has super powers.
She says that she can tell when she's going to die and it's going to happen today.
And then her friends are like, "You got to go do surgery." And she said,
and this is a real, I actually wrote this part down. She says, "I don't care about surgeries."
And she goes back to bed. This episode was nominated for an Emmy for writing.
So was the Game of Thrones finale. There's my only rebuttal.
That's a good rebuttal, that's a great rebuttal. That's a great rebuttal.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Go on, Tom.
Solid point. Okay. So she goes to work anyway. She tells Dr. Patrick Dempsey that she can see the
future. And he's like, "Yeah, I've also started into eternity." And then they share a moment.
And Dr. Katherine Heigl says that she's not going to sleep with Dr.
Another Guy. And she says that in front of all of her coworkers, she's like,
"I'm never going to sleep with you, Dr. Another Guy." And he's like, "Please." And she's like,
"Nah." And then boss doctor comes in and she has a baby. And that's when the episode really starts.
This is this also when the lady that I've been seeing
starts to get mad at me for talking through the whole episode. So an ambulance
pulls up to the hospital and there's a woman screaming in the back. And it's very unclear
whether she has been screaming the whole time that she was in the ambulance or if she just showed up
and saw doctors and she was scared of them. There's a guy inside of the ambulance who has
a chest wound, a grievous chest wound. And Christina Ricci is the ambulance lady.
That's correct. They're called EMTs but. That you don't have to watch
Grey's Anatomy to know. You are a human who probably should know what an EMT is.
What is this? Dropping the Grey's Anatomy lore on you.
Yeah. A mythical creature called an EMT.
We don't all read the Grey's Anatomy Wiki obsessively and know what they're called, Nina.
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan, okay.
EMTs.
So an EMT is inside and she's playing the ambulance lady. And
so it's Christina Ricci. And this part's really, really funny.
She's Christina reaching into a guy's chest because he has a big sucking chest wound.
And then they do the opening theme song, which I think we all know the
opening theme song, Grey's Anatomy. I don't even need to bring that up.
Please don't make me sing.
So the the Christina Ricci guy,
he's unconscious and his wife's screaming all the time. And when she finally stops screaming,
17 minutes later, it's 17 minutes into the episode. She stopped screaming. They figure
out that what happened to the unconscious guy is that he shot himself with a bazooka.
That's correct.
So this guy built a bazooka. It didn't work. So he Elmer Fudded and just like climbed out in front of
it and stared down the barrel and accidentally shot himself in the chest with a bazooka.
That's correct. That's actually correct. That happened.
Thank you very much because I actually, I do feel like I need somebody to tell me that I didn't just
eat a bunch of spicy food and come up with this story on my own because around this point ...
It's part of a Civil War reenactment or no, not Civil War, World War II, World War I.
It's the Civil War with bazookas.
Numbers have been down across the board at Civil War reenactments ever since everybody
realized that the whole good guy, bad guy thing was pretty black and white.
Everyone's got a historical blind spot and mine is the Civil War.
And weaponry
And weaponry. At least I know what happens in this episode
Anyway. So we find out that the guy shot himself with a bazooka and that's why he's sick.
And at this point I'm writing on my tablet and I break my stylus because
I'm writing so hard and I'm so angry about it. So I had to switch over to my notepad.
Oh boy.
So then.
So he's got an unexploded round in his chest,
He's got an unexploded round in chest. Christina Ricci has to keep her hand
inside of his chest or it'll blow up maybe. We don't know. So they bring
in the bomb squad. And the bomb squad is being led by Coach Carter from Friday Night Lights.
His name's Coach Taylor.
Coach Taylor? That's his name.
The guy Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights. And he's all like-
You can't even know Friday Night Lights too. Is that so much to ask?
How many shows do you want me to watch? So he comes in and he's all bright eyes, bazooka
tummies, can't lose. And then the best part of this two-part episode is when the bomb squad guy
looks at the x-ray of the guy's chest with the bazooka round inside of it. And it's the size
of a toaster. And it's taking up his entire torso. And he and the head of surgery stare at this x-ray
and I swear to god, the bomb squad guy goes, "When the hell are people going to learn?"
Implying that this is not the first time that somebody shot themself with a bazooka.
A homemade bazooka.
He's an old hand at this. Yeah, yeah. Right.
And then the Dr. Guy that he's standing next to says, "Maybe it's not as bad as it looks." And
again this show got an Emmy nomination for writing and I can't stop laughing.
I really don't think either of those are-
Meredith Grey winds up sticking her hand into the guy's chest so that Christina Ricci can run away.
Sorry, so that the EMT can run away. And then that's the end of part one. And then at the
beginning of part two, Katherine Heigl has sex with that guy that she said she wouldn't have sex
with. I get into a fight with the girl that I've been seeing. She leaves, I start to get drunk,
Meredith Grey winds up meeting up with Patrick Dempsey doctor. And then Patrick Dempsey doctor
turns into my dad. And he starts shouting about how disappointed he is in me. And then
I realized that I fell asleep. And when I wake up the coach from Friday Night Lights explodes.
Does he really?
He actually explodes. He does explode.
15.9 million people watched this episode. That's all.
That's the second season. It was the second season.
If I'm not mistaken, it was a super bowl episode.
You're absolutely right, it was. I did some reading.
While that does sound like a pretty wild death. Nina, why don't you tell us about yours?
Okay. I mean,
I feel like a huge goober being like, "I like Gray's Anatomy," after all of this preamble.
I like Grey's Anatomy feel free to sue me, but don't actually because I can't afford a lawyer.
I mean, it's one of the most popular shows on television so clearly it's not
bad to like Grey's Anatomy.
Right.
And all the people who are watching this clicked
on it because it has Grey's Anatomy in the title so clearly they watch it too.
I just am aware of in this setting, I know exactly how alone I am. And I just
need to sit with that knowledge. There's one episode of the show, actually, there are two
episodes I won't ever watch when I rewatch the show. One is one where it turns into a musical and
they just sing pop songs over the whole thing. And it's terrible. It's so bad. It's so bad.
Did they call it Glee's Anatomy? Or did they just?
They left that one. It was too low hanging fruit. They couldn't take it. The other one I won't
watch, partly because this is just a phobia that I actually have in my life is there is one where
every major doctor from the hospital, because they always allow them to do the same thing at the same
time. One of my favorite things about the show is people get married a lot on the show. And every
person at the hospital leaves their job to attend said wedding. And so I just imagine like someone
being like, "Oh my god, there was a car accident. There's so much blood." And
there's just a janitor there being like, "Sorry, they're at a wedding. Hope you feel better."
So they always have everyone in the same place at the same time, which to me feels like a
terrible idea. It's like how you don't have the president in the same room as the speaker of the
house most of the time. So there's one where they send every single attending physician
on a tiny little plane and it crashes. And that neatly disposes of two main characters,
Lexie Grey, and Mark Sloan, and also the leg of another character, Arizona Robbins. So it's
technically two and a half casualties.
The leg's contract was up.
Yeah. The leg's contract was up. So, and the characters they kill off are a couple.
So it's very depressing because she dies first. Cause she's totally trapped under the plane rubble
and he's like, "You're going to get out and we're going to have kids and it's going to be great."
And then she dies. And then he is like, "I'm totally fine." And then like he passes out and
they lift up his shirt and his intestines fall out. Tom finally looks intrigued by something.
This is an intense show.
No, I am. I'm so intrigued by the show because everything that I can tell about
it is that it's basically like that first Transformers movie, the cartoon one where they
every season, they just need to wipe out the slate and bring in new toys,
just introduce new Grey's Anatomy action figures that everybody can go out and buy for Christmas.
I have one more defense. And this one actually was a frustrating death in terms of like,
you just wanted something to go better for this person. Mandy Moore played a part in the season
six finale, which is a two-part episode where a disgruntled former patient's husband comes
to the hospital with a gun and he kills half the staff. And it's actually like
after the final season of Game of Thrones, I actually went back and rewatched that. And
I was like, cool, dramatic tension, stakes. I remember what these are now. And so Mandy
Moore survives a hospital shooting. She's a patient awaiting surgery. She manages to not
get shot. And then in the next season she comes back to get her surgery and she dies in surgery.
Right.
And you're just like, why?
Yeah. That's-
It's a casually cruel show for being like a network sitcom with a lot of kissing on it.
It's mean. It's a mean show that spends a lot of time hurting people's feelings. Many people
have been like the most prolific serial killer of our time is Shonda Rhimes. Because all she does
is just murder people with impunity, especially when she's mad at them, which is extremely cool.
It's interesting though, because I mean soap operas are notorious for people
dying, coming back to life, secret lost sister.
These network dramas, they're the same thing. They just have better production values.
Right. But it also has some spite baked in like Patrick Dempsey was like, "I want more
time to go race my cars." And how does he die? Car crash. It's so petty. I love it.
Wouldn't that be great if after they kill off George by hitting him with a bus,
every single character that they write off is also hit by a bus. They're like,
"He also was hit by a bus trying to save someone." See, everyone was hit by a bus.
That's a show I could get behind.
In Seattle, there's an epidemic of buses,
just hitting people all the time. The buses have gone crazy.
And then you got to spin off like the Bus Whisperer and someone's
got to try to track down this bus killer.
Played by Eliza Dushku?
Yes. She's back. She has to go back in time to the bus depot to stop the bus driver.
And her first name is Bus.
You're welcome, network TV.
She plays Bus Mulligan. She used to be a bus driver until this terrible accident.
Bus McGuffin.
Yes.
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