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Lord Byron, the chartered accountant ([personal profile] askmehow) wrote2008-11-04 12:59 pm
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Grey's Anatomy casting spoiler

Big, big casting spoiler for Grey's Anatomy

Uncool, ABC. Uncool.

Other reactions tend to focus on the injustice of firing Brooke Smith, and punishing her for a storyline not of her devising; [livejournal.com profile] jennyo, for example, is right on the money, but I'd like to focus on the creative impact for a moment.

Despite the Shonda et al's claims that Smith wasn't let go for playing a lesbian/bi character, and that Hahn's leaving will have repercussions for Callie's arc for the rest of the season, I do think that this smack uncomfortably of dead-girlfriend-in-the-refridgerator syndrome. Let me explain:

At the beginning of the season, the writers of the show explicitly said that they wanted to deal with the Callie/Erica storyline in a realistic, uncliched way. Instead, they remove one half of the couple and have the other deal with the ramifications of the loss. Not only is this repetitive storytelling (re: Cristina and Burke, as Shonda acknowledges), but it is reductive in the extreme; Erica is now reduced to becoming a footnote in Callie's angst over her sexual history as an afterthought instead of dealing with the reality of a (potential) relationship.

In short: badly played, ABC. Untrustworthy gundas indeed.

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