5 Reasons We're Still Watching Grey's Anatomy - And You Should Too!

Ah, Grey’s Anatomy. Nine years and 10 seasons ago we fell in love with the young interns of Seattle Grace led by Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo). ER was in its tenth year, but was no longer the high-powered medical drama it once was. The TV landscape was ripe for a female-driven medical show and Shonda Rhimes delivered. 

(RELATED: Color, Class & Queers: Shonda Rhimes Re-Writes the TV Landscape to Look Like Us)

ABC’s Grey’s was an instant hit. Over the years Grey’s has been consistently queer-friendly as well as being the most thoroughly racially and ethnically integrated show on TV.
There have been a few less-than-stellar seasons, but season 10 has been exceptional. When the show went on winter hiatus in December it left viewers hanging, waiting for key questions to be answered about the characters we love. Here are five reasons we’re still watching and why you should watch as the season starts up again, tonight, beginning with 12 new episodes with no repeats.

5. Is There a Doctor in the House?
The foundation of Grey’s Anatomy is still the medical aspect of the drama, like last season’s 3D printing of new veins for a heart. Even cases that seem simple can turn out to be super complex, like the college student transgender couple (she was having top surgery to transition and was being supported by his MTF partner) who have to deal with parental disapproval.   
　

4. New Interns
Grey’s Anatomy has kept its stable of core docs from season 1, but the infusion of new faces–and potential bed partners–keeps the thermostat on hot. Season 9 intern Leah Murphy (Tessa Ferrer) has been eager to please, especially in surgical rotation. In season 10 she got the opportunity to do more than that when Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) turned to her when she and Callie (Sara Ramirez) split up.

3. Life Support
 Medicine is a metaphor for life in many ways on Grey’s Anatomy. The show’s voice-overs at the beginning and end of each episode explain how the heart isn’t just an organ and the brain often disconnects rather than connects us to each other. As then-Chief of Staff Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) told the interns at the start of season 1, the relationships forged at Seattle Grace will be the most important of your lives. He was right.  

2. Heart Failure
Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Cristina (Sandra Oh). Cristina and Meredith. They have been each other’s "person" since season 1. They are star-crossed lovers from another time, closer to each other than they have ever been to any man, despite them both marrying (and Cristina divorcing). They have been through each of them nearly dying, a plane crash and buying Seattle Grace together. There have been breakdowns and there have been break ups. And now...this dynamic duo at the heart of Grey’s Anatomy may be over as Sandra Oh prepares to leave the show. Will there be a final kiss (fingers crossed)?

1. Chemistry
Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) have been to hell and back, but they’re still married, they still have daughter Sofia, they are still hot for each other, they still love each other. Callie almost died in season 7, Arizona lost a leg and almost died in season 8, they almost lost each other in season 9. These two are the longest-running lesbian couple on primetime. Can this marriage be saved?
　
Victoria A. Brownworth is an award-winning journalist, editor and writer. She has won the NLGJA and the Society of Professional Journalists awards, the Lambda Literary Award and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a regular contributor to The Advocate and SheWired, a blogger for Huffington Post and an contributing editor for Curve magazine and Lambda Literary Review. Her novella, Ordinary Mayhem, won Honorable Mention in Best Horror 2012. Her collection of vampire stories, Night Bites, has been published in several languages. Her novel, After It Happened will be published in fall 2014. @VABVOX